


The Damned and The Found

by queen_insane



Series: The Tale of Destiny [1]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, It's not blink and you miss it though, James Norrington deserved better, POV Original Character, Very small Black Sails crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:22:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 39,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27591296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_insane/pseuds/queen_insane
Summary: Katharine arrived in Port Royal with a plan: find the pirate ship responsible for her father's death, get revenge, and move on. What she didn't expect was to fall in love or create bonds that would take her on adventures that would change her life forever.
Relationships: Elizabeth Swann/Will Turner, James Norrington/Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Tale of Destiny [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2049327
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	1. Part 1.1: The Early and The Attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine settles into to Port Royal and makes a number of acquaintances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is only rated M because of a few very small scenes. It is probably closer to T than M but I've given it the M rating to be safe.

Katharine arrived at the port quietly with very little on her. The pistol her father had died for, a set of clothing, a sword, and a newspaper clipping from the port town over that Governor Weatherby Swann was looking for a new servant girl to shadow his daughter. The port here was much larger than the one she had lived in previously and her eyes took the whole thing in. More battlements, forts, and stone. Better fortified.

Katharine was very lucky their ship had not been attacked by pirates on the way over. However she still quietly wished it had been. Just on the off chance it had been that ship. The ship she was searching for. Instead she was here, in a port that screamed come find me. Come avenge me of the gold and the wealth that I keep hidden in my chest. The perfect place to wait for that damnable black ship. Of which she would avail herself her revenge. For a second she closed her eyes, and she was back on her father’s ship. They stood across from each other, swords drawn as he walked her through the paces.

A man bumped into her, “Stop lollygagging and get a move on, you’re hogging up space on the dock and we need to be getting the stock out of the ship.”

His words broke the spell that the town seemed to have cast on her and she walked forward a bit more confidently. The sun hit her skin, and under the harsh light it gleamed darker than the bronze of some coins that men were so often willing to die for.

\---

Getting the job at the Governor’s Mansion should have been harder, Katharine thought. But Mister Swann was a simple man of simple mind who wanted good things for his daughter. A man who believed he had good morals in a world where morals were slowly crumbling. Thankfully Katharine was good at presenting as non-threatening. Good at appearing mild mannered. Something about her eyes were kind, her father had told her once upon a time. Somewhere between tucking her in for bed and blowing out the light. A gift from your mother. A mother Katharine hardly knew.

That night Katharine helped Elizabeth get ready for bed, her voice silent as the grave. It was easier to go unnoticed if she didn’t talk. Easier to lay in wait. However Elizabeth liked to talk, Katharine had found. It made it harder not to engage when Elizabeth was so kind about everything too, “Thank you,” Elizabeth said when Katharine had finished.

“My pleasure,” Katharine answered, “It is my job after all.”

“You don’t speak much do you,” Elizabeth surmised.

“Would you like it if we spoke more?”

She didn't know what Elizabeth was pushing for. Servants and the people they cared for rarely mixed, “The rest of the women here gossip. You don’t.”

There wasn’t anything to gossip about Katharine though. This was just a house, a rich family, a port that collected goods and services. Port Royal so far, for all it’s wealth, was dreadfully boring. It was hard for stagnant places to make powerful people. Because of this Katharine thought Elizabeth was like steel, steel that had yet to be forged. Katharine knew forgery. Had lived with it much of her life on her father’s ship. In the port towns where she had watched craftsmen heat metal and hammer it into shape. Create from almost nothing, beautiful swords that could kill as much as they could protect a man from death.

That night Katharine cut her hair, short, but not too short. Watched the bits of it float to the ground beneath her. Like this, one could still see her womanly charm if they looked hard enough. However if dressed in the right clothing, and hidden by the shadow of night, most would only see the face of a man. A disguise against those who would not look hard enough. When next Katharine saw Elizabeth, she smiled and Katharine ended up smiling back, “I love what you’ve done to your hair,” Elizabeth gave the compliment freely and Katharine could see that she meant it.

\---

One night, when Governor Swann had gone out to inspect the fortress, and to walk above the shore, before it was time for Elizabeth to go to bed - that was when duty bent for the first time. Katharine stood behind Elizabeth, as the servants - the ones who did not know how to use a sword - set the table. She was quiet again, and she could not help but stop thinking about what Elizabeth had told her, about how silent she was sometimes. Her comment had bothered Katharine more than she had thought it would. It wasn’t that Katharine was a silent person. It was just easier this way. To blend in. To not get attached.

In front of her, at the table, a chair was pulled out and Elizabeth sat down.

Then a second setting was placed beside her and the chair in front of it, pulled out. Katharine stared at it confused about who the place setting was for. No one sat and Elizabeth looked at Katharine through the shadow of the candle flicker, “Join me for dinner?”

The way Elizabeth said it, sounded innocuous, and simple, as if she had not just asked Katharine to join her at the table. A table for which Katharine did not belong, “I don’t know -”

“Please? I wish to know you better.”

With a nod Katharine sat and tried to not be wary about the situation. One of the servants poured her a glass of wine, “Your father would not be happy about this,” Katharine told her.

“My father doesn’t have to know,” Katharine wondered if Elizabeth was lonely up here in her ivory tower of finer things, “Tell me a story,” she almost all but commanded.

“As long as you tell me one thing that is true,” Katharine’s father had always told her that you should never trade anything away for free, and stories had high value indeed true or not.

“I am in love with a blacksmith’s apprentice,” that was not the truth that Katharine had been expecting, “I think he may love me too, but I fear that our social standings will keep us from each other.”

She looked sad after she had told her one true thing to Katharine. Sadder than perhaps Katharine had expected. Maybe this was who Elizabeth truly was, and Katharine wondered for the first time if there was real friendship to be found here. True companionship across divided lines. What Elizabeth had told her felt like something you would whisper to a friend under the covers at night time. So Katharine decided to tell Elizabeth a story. A true story. Her own, “There once was a merchant. He was dark of skin, but had earned his freedom. Not a pirate, but a man somehow respected by those above his station. He was proud, and good at what he did. He was also, good with the sword, and well learned with a pistol. As a man of the sea had to often be.”

“He sounds lovely,” Elizabeth said.

He had been, Katharine thought, “He had both wife and daughter. But the wife caught ill, when the girl was young and so the responsibility of raising the child fell to him. Most men would give their daughters up then. To be raised by a woman of the shore, but not this man. He chose to bring her with him. Across the sea and across the wave. One day, while out sailing he came upon a ship that had been ransacked, and stopped to check upon its status. It was here where he found it.”

Katharine had a taste of the soup in front of her while Elizabeth listened on, “What did he find?” She asked.

“A pistol. It seemed simple and plain at first. Not worth taking as plunder. But the more he used it the more he realized - it never jammed, it never misfired, and it always hit its intended target. For some time he thought of keeping the weapon for himself. But, eventually gave it to his daughter. So that she could protect herself from those who would seek them harm. And for a time, life sought them no harm.”

“This story doesn’t have a happy ending, does it?” Elizabeth commented.

Not many stories on the sea did, Katharine knew. Fate on the high waters of the ocean was too tempestuous, “But then they were come upon by a black ship with black sails. And there was a fight. The man on the ship was looking for the pistol, but the merchant could not give up its location without giving up his daughter. And as she hid - she watched - and lost, and when it was done, and the ship mostly searched save where she was hiding, cast adrift at sea.”

Katharine put her soup spoon down, having finished her tale, and also having reached the bottom of the bowl. Elizabeth didn’t say anything for a moment and then she said, “When I was little I thought I saw a ship that looked the same,” Katharine hadn’t expected that either, “How much of that is true?”

“Enough,” Katharine answered.

\---

The first attack came between the time when the moon was at its highest and before the sun had woken to consider peaking above the horizon. There was cannon fire and Katharine awoke to the sound of yelling. Quickly, as to not wake the servant sleeping next to her she slipped out of bed and pulled the box she had been keeping secret out from under her bed. Inside was clothing that she had commissioned with what little coin she had scraped together. It was for one of the officers at the house, she had told the man at the counter when he had wondered just what the servant of the governor's daughter was doing asking for the cloth.

Slowly Katharine slipped it on, and then slipped outside just as simply. Outside and further down the streets of the port, there was chaos, a cannonball whirled past her head as the soldiers of the fort fought off the simple pirate attack. She ducked into an alley as two pirates ran up the street. Cautiously she made her way through the town streets, trying to find a good place to get a good glimpse of the ship that had attacked the harbor. Then, a break, a shaft of moonlight, and a plain ship sat in the harbor. No black sails. Her heart sank but she didn’t have time to consider this as two voices cried out from behind her, “There! A group of them!”

She turned expecting the voices to be yelling at her but instead it was a small group of uniformed officers who seemed to have been caught out. The pirates hollered and for a second Katharine debated on what to do, but as the pirates set upon the men like dogs, she squared her shoulders and left her perch of safety. This was exactly why she had disguised herself. If a servant of The Governor’s Mansion was found out fighting pirates, the recourse for punishment would be swift.

When she reached the sword fighting, there was only one man left, and two pirates. He was doing his best to fend them off, in holding his own. With nary a thought Katharine pulled her gun, and before it was fully raised, fired. She knew it would strike true.

The pirate he was fighting staggered back and the other was so taken by his friend being downed that the unknown fighter was easily able to down the other one. Then he turned and oh, under the moonlight his eyes were dark. Hooded and strong, they pulled Katharine in as the tide pulled the shore into the sea, “Thank you,” he said in a deep baritone that reminded Katharine of a cannon’s boom.

It sent shivers down her spine.

Katharine wanted to say more but the words were stolen from her by a cry across the street. Swiftly they had two more pirate attackers upon them. Perhaps having seen their fallen comrades and wanting to avenge them.

From that point on, everything was flashes of steel and silver and Katharine was lost to the dance that was the thrust and parry of sword fighting. Her father’s hand on her hip, as he helped her get used to the tilt of the ship, the waves, the way that she would stumble and fall. A calloused hand to help her up after she found her father’s sword at her neck. Then as the memory faded, she ran the man in front of her through. She looked up and caught the gaze of the man she had been fighting with. Their eyes locked, “You’re quite the fighter,” the same man said, chest heaving, “Why have I not seen you in my garrison?”

“Maybe you are not looking close enough,” Katharine answered, realizing that her clothing had indeed tricked his eyes.

“Perhaps,” his eyes did not waver from their regard of her, and Katharine was helpless to turn away, “May I have a name?”

“Killian,” an easy lie, “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Well,” he looked around, breaking their connection and leaving Katharine scrambling to pick up the pieces, “The city seems to be on fire. Maybe we shall see each other later. When the fighting has come to an end.”

“If I’m lucky,” Katharine said, realizing too late that she had meant to say, ‘if you’re lucky’.

They departed then. Katharine’s heart beating in her chest.

\---

The next day Katharine opened the door to find the same dark gaze staring at her. She blinked, “May I come in?”

She stepped aside, “You may.”

Norrington. His name was James Norrington, and Katharine had already been helplessly pulled away by his riptide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first story in a trio that will eventually cross over into Black Sails. This story focuses specifically on the first three pirate films and is a retelling of those with a lot of extra bits and a few changes. Anything other than what happens in those films is considered non-canon. This story also plays with the historical time placement of the first three films, and places them in the very late 1600s instead of the 1720s so as to better fit with the historical time placement of Black Sails which takes place in the early 1700s. It all works out. Somehow.
> 
> All three stories are complete.
> 
> Also Katharine has a thing for pretty eyes and a deep voice, pass it on.


	2. Part 1.2: The Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine and Norrington grow closer, but peace is not made to last.

From that day on Katharine waited restlessly for the days where James Norrington would come calling on Elizabeth - or Governor Swann depending on the meeting. After the first attack Port Royal was greatly working to improve their defenses. The pirates had gotten too close to bringing the town to ruin. It could not happen again. This seemed ridiculous to Katharine considering what she knew of the ship with black sails but she kept that to herself. It wasn’t as if they would believe a servant girl. Not if she started sprouting tales about undead pirates, and ghost ships.

When it came to Norrington, Katharine knew nothing could come of her feelings, but there was still a blade in her heart that could not be yanked free. Often she would stand in the background as they talked but sometimes Elizabeth or Norrington would turn to her and say, “What do you think?”

And Katharine would find the courage to say, “I agree” or “It does not seem wise.”

Sometimes she did not know what it was she was agreeing to. Despite her interest in Norrington, she had very little interest when it came to the fortification of Port Royal. However her agreeable demeanor during these debates must have caught on, because one day Governor Swann looked at her as she was picking up the silverware from his late lunch, “I am thinking of pushing for a match between my daughter and the lieutenant. You know my daughter’s whims better than most. How do you think it would sit?”

For a second Katharine felt the words die in her throat, and then in a rush she said, “I think they would be a good match.”

“Hm,” he seemed to consider her words, “I agree,” and then he said, “However I would like to know more about him before I just hand my daughter over to him. Is he kind? Is he good stock? It’s much harder to get the measure of a man these days.”

“I do not know what you wish me to do about it, sir. If I’m to be frank.”

When she said that he got a twinkle in his eye, the same that Elizabeth got in her eye when she said ‘Please cover for me, I wish to see William today’. It was a family trait it seemed, that twinkle. Like the stars in the sky that hung above her father’s boat. That sort of twinkle was deadly, her father said as he stood above charts. It lured men into thinking they were safe.That there was something to be had when it was followed. An island full of treasure where the star led. The only thing you could trust on the sea was the map in your hands and the men at your beck and call. And even then sometimes the men lied. Like her father had. Broken promises of being there for her forever, promises of seeing her grow old enough to wear the dresses he had saved after her mother had died, “I am loaning you out to him for the day tomorrow, as thanks for doing such a good job defending the fort. You will get the measure of him then. I will pay you a bonus stipend for it.”

Loaning was such an ugly word. Such a terrible thing scrapped on the ground. Like chains on a trading boat. It implied ownership, it implied the lesser of her. Katharine was not the lesser of anyone. Especially not this man. Instead she said, “If that will help you.”

“It will,” he answered.

\---

The house of James Norrington was much smaller than the house of Elizabeth Swann. It was still a decently sized thing in the main sprawl of the port, made eventually for two people, for a wife and a husband. However it lacked the ornate touches of the mansion. It was simple.

Norrington greeted her in plain cloth too, not like the uniform she had come to identify him by. His wig was removed and she could see now that he had long brown hair that he wore tied up behind his head in a blue ribbon. Stripped of everything Katharine found him even more handsome. He cut a good figure when he didn’t have performance to hide behind.

He eyed her and then opened the door wide, “Come in.”

She stepped into his home and lingered by the door unsure of what to do. It felt odd, the unknowing. Like she was wearing the clothing of a different person. Her father used to tell her that one day she would fall in love, and leave the sea behind. In that moment Katharine had sworn to him that she wanted to remain with him for all time. That she too wanted to be a merchant, even if she knew that wasn’t something offered to her by the visage of her sex. And yet here she was, teetering on the brink of something. Her feelings for this man could tear her from her path of revenge, “What do you want me to do?”

“Nothing,” he told her, “Governor Swann thinks himself smart but I know why he sent you my way. You have caught me at the start of my morning routine. Come join me for breakfast.”

“Join as in -”

Katharine could hardly believe what she was hearing, “Sit with me, later I will go to the fort and you will join me there while I run drills with the men. Then I will send you home.”

That was not what Governor Swann had wanted, he had told her explicitly that she was to stay with him for the whole day. She knew - by enough of Norrington’s visits to the Mansion - that he went to the fort at mid morning and was normally done by the afternoon. Her visit would be short. Could she think of a way to - no, her heart told her, this was better. Harder for things to get messy when they didn’t linger, “Breakfast it is.”

\---

They ate in silence, as Norrington read the book he had brought with him. The meal was simple, creamed oats and bread with honey and tea. But it was nourishing and tasted better than anything Katharine had gotten in the servants quarters. She ate it slowly, doing her best to not let how much she enjoyed it show. Even if she wanted to eat it by the spoonful. Norrington it seemed - already had one servant. But just the one, compared to the many that made up the Swann Mansion. She continued to eye the book in his hands to the point where he finally lowered it to look at her, “Is the book that I’m reading of interest to you?”

“I haven’t read it,” she answered, “I was curious what words were contained on the page.”

“You enjoy reading,” he seemed impressed by that.

He should not have been. If they had met at the harbor after her father had brought goods to the town he would have not been. But that was not then, and he did not know that Katharine had devoured books on her father’s ship. Her father had given her a thorough education in all naval matters, “I do.”

“Well then you should know that this is a dreadfully boring tale told by some naval officer who perhaps wishes to make a penny off the stories in his travels.”

Katharine laughed, she couldn’t help herself, “Sailors or men who sail always seem to think they’ve been through more than they have, at least until they truly go through it.”

“Indeed,” he did not seem put off by her laughter, or her words, “There are pirates in this story but I do not doubt they are fabricated.”

“You’ve come across pirates before?”

That was a stupid question Katharine thought when she finished asking it. Of course he had. They had been together when he had, but he had no knowledge of that, and she couldn’t just show her hand like that. She had watched her father play cards with the men on their downtime on the ship, and he always kept things as close to his chest as he could until the time came to show what he had to show for it. He won more often than not, “A few,” he answered her.

That seemed to be the end of that then. She wouldn’t fawn over him for having slain a pirate or two. And he seemed to be glad of it.

\---

The fort was a huge thing. Made sturdy and strong with a large place for men to march back and forth during a show, or to practice their sword skills. This is what they were doing now, as Katharine sat behind Norrington who paced in front of the men hands clasped behind his back. He had corrected posture, and form and Katharine had continued to not say a thing. Since their shaded breakfast she had been mostly silent. Reading the book he had given her while he got ready to go to the fort, while he finished chores around the house that could not be done by the one servant he owned.

Already she knew what she would tell Governor Swann that would please him. Norrington was a good man, a moral man with just character. He would be kind to Elizabeth. Just like Governor Swann wanted. But Elizabeth would wither under him. A woman in love with a blacksmith was not made for someone like Norrington. Not as he was. Maybe not as he could be. But Governor Swann cared not to hear any of that. Money created stars in the eyes of anyone who had it, all but Elizabeth who seemed to chafe against the binding of the purse. One of the men lunged but his lunge was low and left him open for attack. Before she could control it, her father’s voice came from her mouth, “If you lunge like that you’ll find a blade between your ribs. Aim straight and true.”

All three men turned to look at her, “What did you say?” Norrington asked her quizzically.

“I -” She hesitated, “I have had many jobs that have put me in contact with trained men of good stock. I was just repeating what I had heard,” she looked down at the book she should have been reading.

The words on the page were there to provide distraction. Something that Norrington had given her so she didn’t bother him. But Katharine liked that after he had realized she enjoyed reading, he had embraced it. That it didn’t seem to bother him - as it bothered some men - that some well learned women could understand more than what was told to them. It didn’t bother him that a servant could be smart. It only made the beat in Katharine’s heart that sounded like the ocean louder, “Wherever you picked it up, you were right,” Norrington stared at the men, “Positions. Again.”

Katharine wasn’t made for his life either. She looked down at her book and continued to read.

\---

The second attack was a shock. Like a bullet that clipped into the chest, splintering the wood behind the body as it cut clean through.

Katharine was down in the parlor reading a book that Norrington had dropped off for her a few days prior. Her heart was still mending. Just that afternoon Norrington had - Katharine was sure it had been planned - asked Elizabeth to marry him. Fresh off a promotion to Commodore. Elizabeth hadn’t given an answer yet, but Katharine understood how these sort of things worked. How this sort of life worked.

She turned the page and the words, something about duty and men lining up to be picked off in battle, blurred in front of her. Cannon fire boomed outside. For a second the loud explosions sounded like the sort of fire that happened late at night when the fort was practicing for a night attack but it grew louder. Incessant. Something impossible to ignore. And then there was male hooting and hollering that grew closer and closer and Katharine knew that this was another attack. With how on high alert the fort had been the past few days, her brain was able to make the leap. Only one ship would have been able to creep up on Port Royal unannounced. This would not go well.

She snapped the book closed as a servant walked slowly towards the door and at the same time she said, “Don’t -” she could hear Elizabeth’s voice as it called down into the parlor to say the same.

But it was too late. The door was smashed open, there was a bang and then a man was dead on the ground. The house was overrun with men and it took a moment for Katharine’s mind - so addled by the suddenness of it all - to realize that she recognized two of them. Her hunch had been correct.

There were black sails in the harbor.

She dropped the book, leaving it upturned and darted through the house and down into the servants quarters. A pirate followed but she was able to make it to her room where she shut the door quickly, tightly. She didn’t have time to change, but she did have time to grab the sword in the box that held her effects, along with her gun. Just in time too as the door slammed open. The gun was already loaded so she cocked the hammer back, aimed it at the wall and pulled the trigger. She could almost hear the smug sound of the pirate before the bullet hit him between the eyeballs.

He keeled over but Katharine had seen this before. She knew that they did not stay down. Instead she stepped over the body and rushed back upstairs, tucking the gun into the pocket of her dress where she hoped that it would remain hidden. Upstairs things were in chaos.

A pirate standing in the parlor spotted her, eyes focusing on her sword with intent, and not a moment later he was upon her. Their swords clashing. As he backed her further into the sitting room she waited - just as she had seen the men do back at the fort - for the perfect opening. Then she found it, aimed true, and struck him in the chest where his heart should have been. He blinked and Katharine followed her sword stroke up with a punch to make sure that he stayed down.

As she stepped out of the room she watched as Elizabeth was led through the parlor by two pirates. The two had hardly a second to share a look before Elizabeth was being yanked out of the door quickly, and Katharine followed to give chase. Down the streets Katharine trailed them, ducking between the pirates and the civilians running scared, eyes not leaving Elizabeth as they got closer to the water. In her mind she didn’t know what she would do when they got there. She was just one woman and the shore was surely overrun with pirates. But her mind was racing to think of a plan.

No good options presented themselves, instead Katharine found herself forced to act on instinct. So she called out, “Stop!”

The pirates restraining Elizabeth turned to look at her and she dropped the sword she had been holding. No good fighting that can rise to fight again, not now in this moment. They stared at her with beady eyes, “Who are you?”

“I am her servant,” the truth as it was now - seemed easier than a lie, “And the laws that govern her, govern me. Take me with you.”

There was a moment of pause and then the shorter one grinned, a terrible look upon his visage, “If that is what you desire.”

A hand wrenched on her arm and then she was in the boat with Elizabeth. As she sat there considering what she had just done she saw the fear in Elizabeth’s eyes. But bravery too. Without thinking she reached down and took Elizabeth’s hand in hers, and squeezed. Comforting. Together they stared out into the bay and finally, after many years of searching and hoping and praying, Katharine laid eyes upon the boat and the crew that had taken her father away from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love Katharine's gun even if it doesn't do much for her other than work as a fantastic tranquilizer. There's just something fun in the idea that she can point it at the deck of a ship and still kill the person she plans on killing.
> 
> Past this chapter were heading into the first pirates film proper. Not much will be changed (yet) but there will be a lot of in between moments and what I hope are good character interactions. This story works more on the idea of a number of small changes that lead to a big change.


	3. Part 1.3: The Captured

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine finds herself under pressure on The Black Pearl, her friendship with Elizabeth grows.

They were separated the second they found footing on the deck of the ship. Katharine’s hand ripped from Elizabeth as they dragged her away. For a moment she thought they meant to kill her, a knife pointed deadly at her neck. Then there was a slap. The sound of boots across the wood of the deck, and Katharine was staring at the man who killed her father. He was not as big as she remembered, but he was just as terrifying. A presence that loomed. A face marred by wrinkles from scowling too often, a lip curled upward in menace. He walked over to them and caught the hand of the man who had slapped Elizabeth before he could do it again, “...ye not lay a hand on those under the protection of parley.”

Ah. So that was why Katharine was alive. What was good for Elizabeth was good for her servant, “Ay sir,” the man answered, but Katharine had seen enough men of the sea to know that he was ruffled.

There was more bargaining. Something about a golden talisman, a trinket that Katharine did not recognize. But tied, most clearly to their curse. As Elizabeth faced down the pirates, with nothing but her wits Katharine could not stop but think that Elizabeth was very strong. That she had been right when she had hypothesized that Elizabeth was made of untempered steel. Just on the verge of being forged into a deadly blade.

As the bargaining continued there was a second where Elizabeth pretended to drop the amulet into the deep sea. In the moment between the drop and the catch the knife at her neck pressed a little bolder and Katharine feared that it would pierce flesh, but it did not. From that point on the pact was sealed and the pressure of the knife eased off, until it was only a simple kiss, “You have a name, Missy?” Her father’s killer asked.

“Elizabeth Turner. I’m a maid in the Governor’s household,” Elizabeth answered his question.

The man holding her opened his mouth to speak, because he remembered what Katharine had said. On the shore, Katharine’s plea to take them with her. He was the only one who seemed to, but Katharine elbowed him directly in the chest hard. A deep sound of discomfort escaped his mouth, and she heard him snarl in reaction to her elbow.

As he got his footing back, the back of a hand collided unflinchingly with Katharine’ mouth and she was knocked to the ground with the force of it. Still her elbow seemed to have done the trick and their pirate captors moved on in discussion, herself forgotten. Her words on the beach - forgotten. Nothing like a bit of violence to get men to lose some reason. Katharine’s lip would fester where the man’s knuckles had slapped into it, but a small festering lip was an easy price to pay for being on this ship. For being given a chance to figure out how to kill this man who could not be killed.

When the bargaining was done, one of the men grabbed her by the arm and yanked her back up. Pulled her along as if to say follow me. She did, although Katharine could tell that Elizabeth had been expecting to be sent back to shore. To find release there, after she had given these men what they wanted. But as the two of them were thrust into the Captain’s Cabin Katharine knew that no such release was coming.

Good.

\---

The cabin they found themselves in was well decorated. For a ship that looked close to decay, and that was haunted by men embittered by undeath, it was surprisingly beautiful. The decoration on the doors was well craved, and there were candles lit everywhere. An oasis of heaven inside a ship from the depths of hell. They would not have a lot of time together alone. The pirate captain would join them shortly, and Katharine did not know if he would again separate them.

Katharine ran her hand along the top of the table and when she turned around she found Elizabeth staring at her, “Why did you come?” Elizabeth asked.

“To protect you,” Katharine said, a half truth.

“I’m not that simple that such a lie would work as an answer,” Elizabeth said with an eye roll.

No, Katharine didn’t think that she was. But she also knew that to speak the real reason was to be discovered. That was not something she could abide, not when she had finally made progress. Not when Port Royal had borne fruit against all odds, her goose to this ship’s golden egg, as it were, “Why do you think I’m here?”

“Your story,” Elizabeth said, “I think you might be here because of that. In fact I’d wager it. Both of us tied together by the black of these sails.”

Honestly now, that she could be honest and she and Elizabeth had been made equal by circumstance she said, “That is true. However a person can do something for two reasons. I’d like to think we are friends of a sort.”

“I have to admit, if there is anyone who I would go through this hell with, it would be you,” Elizabeth returned her honesty with honesty.

“Me too,” Katharine replied.

“After this is done I -”

But whatever she was going to say was left unfinished. The door to the captain’s quarters opened and the two men from before, the skinny one with the false eye and the shorter one that Katharine had elbowed entered the room. They were holding two nice dresses, one for her and one for Elizabeth, Katharine surmised. It would be harder to hide the pistol in this dress, “My current garments are fine I think,” Katharine said.

For her trouble she received another backhand, and this time her lip split. Elizabeth yelled when she went down. However as she stood on shaky legs she could tell that neither man planned to pressure her to wear the gown.

\---

For Katharine the rest of the voyage was easy. For Elizabeth it was harder and Katharine found her sitting on the floor of the Captain’s Cabin, hands wrapped around herself, after the revelation about the ship of the undead.

To be frank, Katharine had not seen the part about them being stripped of flesh coming. However it was hard to see a man once struck through get up after his own death, only to stab her father, and not at least have some idea of the terrors that lay ahead. So the lack of skin, and their clothes as they hung tattered on their empty bodies had not been as much of a shock as she had anticipated. Katharine crouched so she and Elizabeth could be eye to eye, “Are you okay?”

“Did you know?”

Elizabeth asked this question of her, but it was not accusatory, not completely. It wasn’t like Katharine had been given much time to tell her. Things had grown chaotic too quickly, “Some,” Katharine replied, “I watched my father defeat the worst of them, and I watched it matter very little in the end. The terror of their bodies in the moonlight though, that was new to me.”

“And you still decided to come?” This was also said with very little accusation, but this time with a great deal of awe inspired terror, “I can’t imagine the sort of decision making that would go into making such a choice.”

“My ability to be a rational person died with my father,” Katharine said, heard as they talked that Elizabeth’s breathing was starting to even out, “I would like to hope that my lack of surprise will help keep us sane in these trying times.”

“For better or worse then,” Elizabeth told her.

“For better or worse then.”

Elizabeth squeezed her hand as Katharine had done on the boat and Katharine realized that this was the first time someone had attempted to comfort her since her father had died.

\---

The ship was emptied once they reached their destination. A cave where they would - Katharine wasn't completely sure but it had to do something with the talisman and freeing the pirates from whatever gave them their undeath. Now it was just her and two unlucky pirates. And they really were very unlucky. Two quick shots of her gun left them comatose just long enough that Katharine was able to tie them up - back to mast - using spare rope for rigging that had been left on the deck. It seemed mean to do so, but Katharine was nothing if not resourceful and her father had taught her to tie a good knot. There was no moon in the sky for them to somehow shimmy out of their restraints and so she felt safe as she walked the deck of the ship.

There was not much to do on the ship she noted until a second pass of the rail. There on the water a boat caught her eye and she watched as two men rowed into the cave just beyond. A squint of the eye told her that one of them might be William Turner. If he was going to the same cave that the pirates had taken Elizabeth, that meant a rescue. Him somehow being here by a chance of fate also signaled something else. There was another - bigger - ship nearby.

Consequently she didn’t know if they would save Elizabeth, but Katharine knew that if Will Turner loved Elizabeth in the way that Elizabeth loved him - he would.

Observing them row into the cave had gotten Katharine’s mind turning. It was a slow awareness, the realization that this battle for revenge, this simmering in her chest was going to have to wait just a little longer. Elizabeth was not Elizabeth Turner. There was only one Turner Katharine knew of, and he was the blacksmith that Elizabeth loved. The man who had just gone into the cave. The one Elizabeth said by name so often that Katharine could hear it in Elizabeth’s lit as she stood on the deck of the ship.

The curse breaker.

When Will was successful, and once the pirates realized what was going on with Elizabeth, they would come back. And Katharine would still not be able to kill them. Undead as they were. She had to escape. And quickly.

Behind her the pirates were slowly coming to and with the sound of their groaning the first layer of Katharine’s dress rustled onto the floor of the deck, revealing the slip underneath it. No good could come from swimming in a heavy dress. Turning she hit one of the pirates with the butt of her gun incapacitating him. With deft hands she unbuckled his belt, and tied it around her waist as tight as it could be. In this she tucked her gun and then with a look back - and one of the pirates who had just started to come around calling out at her - she jumped into the water over the rail of the ship.

Despite the ominous wind in the cave, the actual water was warm and there was very little shock when she hit the surface. With strong arms she began to swim the way the rowboat had come, and not the way the boat had gone. Katharine knew that in these waters sharks were common, but one could not sail a ship and be afraid of sharks her father had always said. You found yourself too often in the water through no fault of your own. So she continued to swim, the water parting around her easily thanks to the protection of the cove.

Through the mist and the fog, the shape of a ship eventually came into view. It was fair sized. There was shouting as she approached, and she yelled up at them, “I come as a friend of Elizabeth.”

For a second there was more chatter and then a stout man looked down at her, “How can we trust you?”

“I dare say it’s not really about trust,” Katharine shouted back, “It’s about how much harm a woman can do to you. And,” this she said with a fair bit of humor, “Shouldn’t it be me not trusting you?”

There was more chatter and then a woman yelled, “Just let her up Gibbs!” Before a rope was cast down, and Katharine started to climb it, exhaustion finally settling into her arms near the top.

\---

It turned out that her escape proved to be the correct thing to do, because not twenty or so odd minutes after she had climbed aboard the new ships’ deck Elizabeth arrived. But she was not alone, the man Katharine had correctly identified as Will Turner was also with her. As he talked with the crew tersely, Katharine marked that the other man was nowhere to be seen, and so Katharine wondered briefly just what had happened to the other figure. Wondered and then prompt forgot about it when she saw how right she had been about Will’s feelings for Elizabeth.

Now, this match, Katharine thought made a fair deal more sense. Elizabeth was far on her way to becoming tempered steel and be he blacksmith or pirate, that was something sound. Something that could weather storms.

The two shared a glance, happy to see each other but it did not last long as Elizabeth let Will lead her away. Now, unlike Elizabeth who seemed fair upset at the pirates Katharine - despite her hate of the crew that had killed her father - harbored no ill will towards most of them. They were just people trying to make their way like her father had. Outcast. And that was something that Katharine could identify with.

As they pushed off to sea, trying to put as much distance between them and the black sailed ship, Katharine eventually found time to follow Elizabeth down into the hull of the ship. She wasn’t with the beds or tables, but Katharine finally found her in the back of the hold after passing a very distressed looking Will Turner, “He’s a pirate,” Elizabeth said upon seeing her with very little prompting, “You know.”

“Will?”

“Who else,” she answered, “And I’m upset about it. Even though I know I shouldn’t, like he lied to me somehow. Why aren’t you more troubled by this?”

“I don’t hate them,” Katharine told her plainly, “I hate the man and the crew who killed my father, but not pirates.”

“But why? I think back to the port and I can’t forget.”

Katharine thought back to the ruined Port Royal. To Norrington fighting for his life, and people fleeing in terror. Both times, “The color of my skin does not give me many options,” she admitted, “My father got lucky. Very lucky. It is hard to hate something you have to see as part of an option for survival.”

As they talked Katharine didn’t think they were fighting, but it hovered on the edge of something close. Sharp like the edge of a dagger, something that could cut at any moment should one of them choose the wrong words, “Katharine - ” Elizabeth paused seemingly realizing the same thing that Katharine had moments before.

“Not all pirates are bad,” Katharine said, “And loving one, will not splinter you. Will Turner is a good man.”

Instead Katharine rather thought it would make her stronger. Elizabeth opened her mouth to say more but a cry from the top deck had them looking upwards. It seemed that the black sailed ship had caught up with them. Their conversation could be had, another time, if it was even necessary to have it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two things I think that push this story - the first is Katharine's love for Norrington. The second is her friendship with Elizabeth. Both are equally important, and you can see it growing here beyond just "person I liked to talk with because they are near". 
> 
> I adore their relationship in this story as it grows and changes. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	4. Part 1.4: The Split Second

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine deals with the ups and downs of love.

Katharine remembered Elizabeth as she asked, “How are your sword skills?” as the black sailed ship made to catch them from behind, and Katharine remembered her voice as she replied, “Better than some men.”

But the rest was all haze, the clashing sounds of metal and cannon fire, yells and shouts and blood in the system pumping as you fought back against lives that could not be taken. Not in the way that lives were normally taken by a sword.

\---

Boot sounds made heavy footfalls on the deck of the ship. The sound of boarding pirates. The sound of defeat.

The battle had been a short thing. It was hard to fight ghosts after all. However Katharine now had a name for the ship that had haunted her for so long, The Black Pearl. And a name for the man who's countenance had become a thing of nightmares for her. It seemed such a beautiful name for such a terrible ship. And as the so named Captain Barbossa glowered down at her for a second time, a ship name so undeserving of such a terrible Captain. The name of a ship should reflect the owner, her father had said. And nothing of The Black Pearl seemed to reflect in the eyes of the man in front of her. Maybe it had, a long time ago, before the curse had taken him. But so little of it was left to be seen, that Katharine did not know.

Oh yes. Katharine had learned and absorbed quite a lot in a great deal of time.

Like meeting Jack. The man who had gone into the cave with Will but not returned. Katharine wasn’t quite sure what was to be made of him yet, but he seemed ok as far as pirates went when it came to things such as trustworthiness. Which was not much, but enough. The other thing of course was the double confirmation that Will, as she had assumed, was deathly in love with Elizabeth. Having bequeathed himself to Barbossa to have his love released, and with the stipulation that the crew were not to be harmed. Which, even if he was a bit stupid, warmed Katharine to him in a way. Glad that he was kind and glad that this was the person Elizabeth loved if she could not love Norrington as Katharine loved Norrington. Even if Elizabeth was, potentially, to marry him.

Which, at the current juncture did not matter much as Katharine watched Elizabeth stand on the gangplank, undressed all the way down to her under-clothes. A deliberate humiliation. The men were leering and finally one said, “Too long!”

And Katharine did not let out a small gasp as Elizabeth went into the sea, not at all.

Then it was Jack’s turn to go into the brine, and as he crashed into the water and began to swim to the far shore Katharine’s brain caught up with her. She had realized, loosely tied to the mast, that she was neither crew, nor Elizabeth. Barbossa turned to her as she wiggled free of the binding, finally, and caught her with a stare, “Now you lass, you were not part of any agreement I wager.”

Will looked at her stricken as he too was finally realizing the depth of how he had failed her. But, Katharine did not blame him. In the chaos she had almost forgotten herself too, “If you touch me,” she cocked the gun that she had hidden in the folds of her dress as they had taken her, “I will shoot you.”

He looked down at the weapon and his eyes seemed to widen, then he glanced back up at her in recognition, “I know that gun,” he wrapped his long fingers painfully around Katharine’s face, “I remember that ship.”

Katharine did not reply. Instead she fired, and the bullet struck true through and through the top of his head even though she had not aimed there. He collapsed on the ground unmoving and Katharine scurried to the rail of the ship as the pirates surrounded her. It seemed, she too had some stupidity in her as well, “This is a gun that can kill the dead,” she bluffed using the rigging of the ship to climb onto the rail, and aiming it at nothing to keep the pirates at bay, “If you stop me I will kill one of you along with your Captain.”

He would wake soon of course, but she had already shown that the gun had some mystical fortune tied to it. Who were they to call her bluff? As she stood there gun cocked one of them said, “But I woke up from being shot by that abomination.”

Ah, yes - that was who. With a sigh, she gripped the gun tight and tipped backwards into the waves. Just as she did so she watched as Barbossa stood. Well, it hadn’t lasted long, but it had felt good. And as Katharine began her swim to shore, she was glad that she had done it. Just to see the light go out of Barbossa’s eyes by her hand and her hand alone.

Even short lasting things could be sweet.

\---

Katharine had been trapped on this island for over a few hours now and night had finally come upon them for which she was glad. Jack and Elizabeth had spent much of the time fighting with each other, while Katharine built a fire. Then once night had come, Jack had spent an inordinate amount of time potentially flirting with Elizabeth which Katharine found abhorrent but didn’t exactly stop because Elizabeth was half out of the metaphorical blacksmith’s forge. Katharine thought she could fend for herself now.

In front of her Jack was going on about what The Black Pearl meant to him, and Katharine listened as he did so because the way he talked about the ship, the way he loved the ship was in direct opposition to Barbossa. She may have found him a nuisance, but here, at last she found the match for The Black Pearl. From his words to Katharine’s ears, here at last she knew no matter what he did, Katharine would always hold some sort of kindness for him.

“To freedom,” Elizabeth toasted the ship.

“To freedom!” Jack hawked back and knocked back the rest of rum, which landed him squarely out cold.

From across the flame Elizabeth looked at Katharine and then crawled round to join her, both women laying on the sand together staring at the sky and the stars that littered it. Katharine should have kept her mouth shut and yet somehow she said it anyway, “You’re going to marry him aren’t you? When all this is over?”

Elizabeth turned to look at her, and there was no anger on her face for which Katharine was thankful, “Will?”

“Norrington,” she said instead, “He asked you didn’t he? On the parapet?”

“Would it break your heart if I said yes?”

Elizabeth’s words were like being struck by lightning, “You couldn’t have noticed.”

Katharine had been sure she had done a better job of hiding it than that, “He comes by to see me, but he leaves you books. When he gets into shouting matches with my father on the defense of the port it is not me he looks across the room to for support. He loves me because he thinks he should. Not because he does so honestly.”

Something thumped deep in Katharine’s heart and it felt like hope even though she knew it was a lie. Honesty had nothing to do with the relationship between Elizabeth and Norrington, it was all about position. Like chess pieces in a war, where the war was status and the only way to win was to acquire the most. Like a chest brimming with gold, “Will you?” Katharine asked again, this time with the truth of her question between them.

“Only if my hand is forced.”

It was not a no, but it was not a yes either and Katharine knew it was the best she could hope for.

With a sigh she chanced a glance over at Jack passed out and the rum bottles scattered around him. She then cast her eyes to the few trees on the island and the fire she had built. Then she looked back at Elizabeth, “I think I may have an idea when it comes to rescue.”

Elizabeth grinned, “I think I might have the same.”

\---

The fire they built worked. A little too well - but it worked. The smoke signal went up and soon enough they were aboard The HMS Dauntless. Which had been sailing close at hand, looking for Elizabeth.

It could have been a victory. Safety at last. But Elizabeth was focused on saving Will, on stopping the pirate threat, and Katharine remembered what she had been told the night before. She was not surprised in the least then that Elizabeth ended up engaged, the wedding a bargaining chip for Will’s safety. Marriage for Norrington’s promise that he would go after The Black Pearl. Jack whispering in Norrington’s ear about how good of an idea it was the whole time. He wanted immortality for himself. So many people with so many different angles, so many different sides to play and Katharine’s heart among them.

It hurt. But pain was something that could be staggered, and Katharine knew that the blade had yet to be removed. While Elizabeth was off being given warm clothing, something that had not been afforded to Katharine, Norrington found her in his quarters. Katharine was sat in one of the chairs as she read a book she had plucked off his shelf at random, “Congratulations,” Katharine said without looking up.

“Thank you,” he answered, “It means a great deal, coming from you.”

“You wanted my approval after all then.”

“You and Elizabeth are friends now,” he replies, “Are you not?”

“We are,” Katharine turned the page in her book.

“Then that’s all there is to it,” he told her.

That was when Katharine’s heart broke.

\---

The night was quiet. Too quiet, ever since Elizabeth had been dragged kicking and screaming into Norrington’s quarters to join Katharine. Norrington said he was doing it for Elizabeth’s safety, but it felt more like he was jailing her. Elizabeth could protect herself.

For a brief moment Elizabeth hadn’t said anything or done anything, but now Elizabeth was pacing back and forth in front of her. Katharine snapped her book closed on one of Elizabeth’s strides. The floor of the ship creaking below her. That caused Elizabeth to pause and look at her, “I’m sorry,” she said as a way of offering any sort of explanation, even though Katharine knew what she was talking about.

“It’s not your fault,” Katharine told her, “The marriage. You love Will, and you want to protect him. To do something so selflessly, I cannot hold that against you when I know you will hate it more than I would.”

Also, Elizabeth was her friend now. Officially. But that was something that did not need to be said aloud, because it was something that had already been acknowledged the night before, “I wish I could make him see for you -”

But Katharine held up her hand. She didn’t need platitudes. This was a situation of her own making. This was a life of her own design and life did not often go to plan. She would go to the wedding and she would smile, and enjoy it as Elizabeth’s friend but then she would be done.

Katharine did not know what done meant exactly, as she had never really envisioned a life after the man who had killed her father was gone, but she wanted to know what it was. She wanted to know her definition of the word done, “Please do not say anymore,” and it was still too quiet, “If you want to go rescue him I will not stop you.”

“You should come,” Elizabeth entreated her.

And Katharine wanted too. Every fiber in her body told her to go. Instead she stood and handed Elizabeth her father’s gun, “I fear Norrington may need me here. The ship is unguarded, and no one knows these men like I do.”

Elizabeth looked down at the gun that Katharine had given her, “What does this do?”

“It shoots true. I have already loaded it. Make sure you use it at the opportune moment.”

Elizabeth nodded and then said, “And what of your revenge?”

For a second Katharine had a brief time to consider this. But she thought back to when she had shot Barbossa in the face, and the pleasure that she had gotten from that. It would have to be enough. As long as he was dead it would all have to be enough. Norrington would need her here. This ship would need her sword. Katharine closed her eyes just for a moment and in silence, let it all go. She had never been good at holding on to anger anyway, “Shoot him dead for me?”

“Oh I shall.”

Together they began to work, creating a rope from cloth that Elizabeth could use through the window. As they tied knots the outline of Elizabeth’s father sat down outside the door to their quarters. They could just see him as he started to talk, softly, “I just want you to know I, uh, I believe you made a very good decision today,” They shared a look and finished fashioning the rope, “Couldn’t be more proud of you,” Katharine helped Elizabeth down through the window of the ship, “But, you know, even a good decision if made for the wrong reasons can be a wrong decision,” well at least they weren’t completely alone in seeing the folly in Elizabeth marrying Norrington now. But Elizabeth was gone, and Governor Swann must have noticed, for the door swung open moments later. Katharine and Governor Swann brought face to face, the flutter of the rope Katharine had made with Elizabeth visible in the open window, “Oh, what have you done?”

Katharine didn’t have time to answer. There was a gunshot and she walked forward to push Governor Swann further into the room. His eyes went wide as if seeing Katharine for the first time and she poked her head out the door where fighting had already started. She looked back at him, “Stay here please,” before closing him back inside.

Outside there was chaos, Katharine breathed. And then dove in head first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will not be the first time Katharine makes a very quick judgement call due to her emotions when it comes to James Norrington. In fact you may notice, dare I say it, a pattern. 
> 
> I like to imagine in this version it's also Elizabeth who kills Barbossa before he can kill her, using Katharine's father's gun. Even if you can't see it, I like to picture it because it makes things more interesting. 
> 
> The next chapter will be the last of part one. The we'll move on into Dead Man's Chest territory. I'll probably update one more time this week. If the holiday doesn't get me first. Thanks for reading :)


	5. Part 1.5: The Damned and The Found (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine faces death.

The pirate pressed his advantage as he and Katharine traded sword blows. So far she hadn’t found an opening and their dance had brought her up the stairs and onto the quarterdeck. Her arm worked tirelessly to block traded blows, and every so often she would push the blade of the pirate down just a little more with the flick of her blade, just in hopes that when he raised it he raised it sloppy. No luck so far but she was ever hopeful that the mistake would happen. Norrington hadn’t yet returned to the ship and so far the men here were quickly becoming overwhelmed. They had the skill but these were immortal unkillable pirates and they swarmed the deck like ants, their numbers overwhelming.

It was also harder, just a little bit to fight in a skirt. Katharine knew that there were women who had no trouble fighting in a dress, but that was not how she had been trained. Thankfully the one she had wasn’t long, and it was also loose. But occasionally it would catch between her legs and she would be forced to rework her stance.

Finally though, finally there was an opening and she crashed her sword into his bones. He smirked but Katharine adjusted her grip on her sword and cut upwards, into the bone. As it hit the top of his ribs she grabbed the sword with both hands and used his ribs as leverage to hoist him up and then toss him over the rails and into the sea. Bodies were truly far less heavy without all that fat and skin.

Just in time too because she caught Norrington hauling himself over the railing to join the fight. Taking the stairs one at a time, she ducked under a sword aimed at her neck and with a bit of a roar, caught his body with hers, and slammed him into the rail at the bottom of the stairs and also, like the one before, sent him into the ocean where it would hopefully take him a small smattering of time to recover.

In front of her Norrington was doing his best to fend off two pirates and Katharine whistled, getting the attention of one of the two. He turned to her and his brow furrowed, “You shot our Captain.”

“One in the same,” she smiled at him with a grin that dared him to attack.

They began to trade blows and each strike caused her and Norrington to move closer and closer together until he caught a glance at her face, “Killian?”

She could see why he would assume that considering they were in the dark, “Somewhat,” she parried another sword stroke.

Now that he was no longer looking at her face associations came quicker, her dress swishing about her legs, “Katharine.”

“One in the same,” she parried a sword stroke and now she and Norrington were fighting together as if they were dance partners.

“You were Killian all along then I take it.”

She nodded, “This makes it two times I’ve saved your life then?”

“I wouldn't be so glib while we are surrounded by pirates.”

“I think that’s the best time to be glib,” she told him and then blocked a sword blow, “But I catch your inferred meaning.”

Then they really were so deep into the thick of it that conversation became hard. Bodies, falling, and reanimating. Then - like magic - the curse was lifted. As the veil between life and death shifted Katharine stuck the man she was fighting with the pointy end, and she watched as he went down, and didn’t get up. She shared a look with Norrington that bordered on a smile but might have also just been the general appreciation for the skill the other had with a sword.

Katharine closed her eyes, and promised she would keep that memory close after he was married to Elizabeth.

\---

Norrington did not marry Elizabeth.

Instead when they got back to Port Royal a date was set for Jack - who had been captured - to be hung. Something Will could not abide by. Something that Elizabeth could not abide by. So it was decided that they would rescue him. And rescue him they did - a combined effort really. However things went bad as they sometimes did, and they were cornered on the parapet, the three of them. Her, Will, and Jack. And things really could have gone terribly if not for Elizabeth declaring her love for Will. A move that saved him from the gallows. Always the two of them saving each other. Willing to meet the edge of a blade, the boom of a cannon, the danger of the high seas, to keep their happiness for each other.

In the chaos of Elizabeth’s final choice, Jack was able to escape. Slippery as he always was. It should have been a happy ending. But someone had to take the fall for Jack’s escape. There were rules for breaking the law.

Luck was not on Katharine’s side. Instead she felt the weight of the iron on her wrists and had to think about if it was worth it. If she had done the right thing. It had seemed the right thing at the time, when Elizabeth had talked about unlawful hangings, and good men being killed for nothing. Jack didn’t deserve to hang, and it had seemed so easy to give into the plan that Will laid out. Jack hadn’t saved her, but he had helped save Elizabeth and for that Katharine was overflowing with thanks.

But - her mind whispered to her like a traitor as she walked the long walk to jail - could Will have done it without her? Now she would never know.

Next to her Norrington looked disquieted. He had been ever so since the whole operation had happened. Finally, he spoke, “You know I can understand Will’s errant desire to save his own kind, and I can understand Elizabeth not wanting harm to befall the man who helped save her life, but you do I not quite understand.”

“Elizabeth is my friend,” Katharine said by way of saying things.

“You say that, and I hear you, but part of me does not want to believe this was done just for friendship.”

As if friendship wasn’t a powerful force, “Then maybe you do not know me at all, Commodore.”

It was worth it, Katharine decided to see the look on his face as they hauled her into the jail building, and then down the steps into what would be her home until her death. Just as the look they had shared on the ship would have been worth it. In that moment Kathery decided that she would create a small book of his looks in her head, so that when she was hung she would have them to remember him by. Be them cruel or kind, soft or angry she would have them stored in her memory until death.

\---

Elizabeth came to her first after the trial was done, and Katharine was glad for it. Katharine was still too raw from what had happened, and if it had been anyone else she wasn’t sure if she would have been able to bear it.

They were left alone as Elizabeth sat in the chair the guards had provided to her, and they stared at each other for some time, “I have convinced them to postpone your hanging for a few weeks. I told them it would not be good for morale if a woman was hung in the square so soon after the fort was attacked. Or so soon after I had cheered the port with the news of my engagement.”

“Postponing my death only gives me more time to think on it,” Katharine told her jokingly but voice dark, “I would have rather you didn’t.”

“And it gives me more time to think on how to save you,” Elizabeth contended, “And I will think of something.”

Katharine wanted to believe her but as death loomed, it seemed as final a time as any in her life, “How long?”

“A few weeks,” Elizabeth admitted, “A month at most.”

“Good luck then,” Katharine told her and she meant for it to come off as harsh, but more hope seeped into the wording against her will.

“It’s possible. Don’t give up on hope. Not when I haven’t.”

“I’ll endeavor it, but I can promise nothing.”

“I can work with your endeavor,” Elizabeth told her.

If anyone could make miracles out of nothing it was Elizabeth. And Katharine wanted to believe her. She did. But it was so hard to do so.

\---

The next day Norrington came to call. Katharine had not expected to see him. So when he pulled the chair across the room to sit on it, Katharine had been surprised. Just as she had been when he had walked down the stairs. Sword clicking against his belt. Like Elizabeth before him the two of them sat there in the stillness and stared at each other. Neither saying a word. Then for reasons Katharine couldn’t parse, he got up without saying a word and left. She blinked.

He arrived again the next day not soon after Elizabeth had come and gone a second time, and like the day before they found themselves staring at each other. This time though he had discovered his voice, which was a miracle after the day before. When it had seemed locked away behind a door that Katharine had not been able to breach, “Tell me the secret to win Elizabeth’s heart.”

He looked up at her and Katharine realized that he had become a broken man. Losing Elizabeth had been the last straw, or maybe it had been what he perceived as Elizabeth’s deception. He had truly cared for her. Had loved the idea of her. Of what she represented to him. Stability in an unstable world. What he was supposed to want. What he had been told his whole life was the thing he should desire above all else. And it had been denied to him. There was a pause between them as Katharine considered what she should tell him.

To not answer his question and turn him away, would feel good. Like striking a victory blow. He would stand and walk away and they would maybe never see each other again, and Katharine could be content in the knowledge that she had delivered a blow to him that he could not recover from. But her weak heart loved him still, and she remembered what Elizabeth had told her as they lay on the beach. Of expectation and of Norrington’s true heart, “She likes tea in the morning, one cream, one sugar. She reads late into the night, adventure stores, far past the time I or another servant had turned off the light. Before all this started, sometimes I would find her in her father’s study aiming his gun at nothing,” Katharine told him.

“Thank you.”

For two weeks he continued to return to the jail cell, asking for stories and whatever else Katharine felt fit to share. Sometimes they didn’t even talk about Elizabeth. Sometimes he just paced, sharing the weariness of the day with her. Katharine marked off the days in her head. Each time she did so however, she was overcome with a terrible empty feeling. The longer this went on the more it seemed a farce. Something for them to both pass the time with before she was killed. A broken hopeless distraction for her, and a terrible lie for him. He would not win Elizabeth, and his presence had started to hurt Katharine more than it soothed her. Elizabeth’s frequent visits not doing enough to put Katharine in the right state of mind for him anymore. Their conversations about Norrington and what he was doing, not good enough to quell the gulf in Katharine’s heart.

There were only so many times Elizabeth could call Norrington bullheaded, and Katherine could rebuff her and call him a hopeless romantic that either of them could take. Elizabeth was also growing impatient with Katherine’s humor of him. Elizabeth could see it was hurting Katharine, and her friend just wanted it to end. And maybe, in the end, Elizabeth was right.

It was near the end of the second week when Katharine decided that she had enough. Norrington was poised in his chair as he normally was but this time when he asked her to feed him crumbs of Elizabeth’s life Katharine only smiled at him, “No,” she answered.

For a moment, as the surprise rolled through him, he did his best to not show that Katharine had indeed wounded him, “You have chosen to stop now?”

“Yes,” Katharine said, “I have chosen to stop now. I am done with this facade. My end is coming and I want to go to it level headed and with no regrets. Elizabeth loves William. Let her go.”

Frustration clouded his features for a moment but he was a trained gentleman - no matter the circumstance - and his visage was easily managed to smooth out. Instead he stood and stared at her, “Will you tell me what changed your mind?”

“Ask Elizabeth,” Katharine answered him, “She knows.”

\---

For a number of days there was nothing. No one made the journey to visit her. So Katharine laid in her cell and the hours ate at her until there was only a day left. Just the passage of the moon over the night sky to mark her end. As the sun made what was to be the final descent into the horizon, the last that Katharine would ever see, the door upstairs opened and a shaft of light cast down into the row of jail cells.

Katharine pulled herself up off the floor and stood for whoever it was, and suddenly there he was. Katharine stared at Norrington as if he was a ghost. He looked haunted. A man who had not slept for days. Seeing him stirred something in Katharine. Every time Katharine seemed to think that he was done with her, he came back like a bad coin. A lost cursed object that she could not shake herself of, “I talked with Elizabeth,” he said as an explanation for his being there.

“And what did she tell you?”

“A number of things,” he answered, “Chief among them of how stupid and pigheaded I was.”

Katharine could picture it, Elizabeth pacing across the floor in her foyer, face flushed as it got when she was angry. Unloading all of Katharine’s baggage onto Norrington who had surely not been expecting it. It made her smile, “And what else did she say?”

“That you like tea in the morning. No milk, but a cube of sugar. A luxury to you. That you read in the cracks of the day when you are the least busy so as to do your job properly, but so that you also can keep up your continued education. That your father taught you how to rig a boat, how to shoot a gun, and wield a sword. That you gave up your quest for revenge to save me,” his voice caught at the end, as if he could hardly understand it.

“And what did you say to her?” Katharine asked, refusing to give an inch.

“That I had been very stupid, but that my eyes were clear now,” those same eyes shone into hers like the fading of the sun, “That if I so declared it, they would dare not hang my wife.”

“Yes,” Katharine answered him, “I dare think they would not.”

“I love you,” he said most ardently, and Katharine knew that he meant it, “Marry me.”

“I love you,” she returned most ardently, “And I think I will.”

END PART ONE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is basically James Norrington being a straight idiot for a number of pages. His broken brain: I need an excuse to visit Katharine that isn't suspicious. Oh I know! And then he picks the worst possible reason. 
> 
> This chapter is probably the first major change to canon. No more love triangles (was it even ever one?), only two fools in love. As it should be.
> 
> Dead Man's Chest next! Thank you for reading :)


	6. Part 2.1: The Marriage, The Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine becomes Katharine Norrington. But a storm looms on the horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who has seen Dead Man's Chest knows that this title is far more dramatic than it needs to be.

Planning a wedding at the same time that Elizabeth was planning a wedding was hard. At first the two women had thought that planning them at the same time would make it easier, now that they were no longer servant and employer but friend and friend. But that wasn’t the case at all. They had completely different budgets for one thing, and unlike Elizabeth who was willing to wait for some time to get married - James, because he was James now - wanted to get married right away. It wasn’t that he also did not want to wait, however he had already spent almost two months away from the sea and despite his own desire to remain on land with Katharine, he could not put it off any longer.

He was a naval officer after all. And work and his fleet called.

He was also terribly - willfully - putting off the idea of the two of them even remotely sharing a bed until after marriage. This meant that despite their upcoming nuptials Katharine spent most of the time in the small guest bedroom. And she was growing ever sick of it. It wasn’t as if they had the same excuse that Elizabeth and Will did - where they still lived in different homes. Sometimes Katharine thought James was far too staunch for his own good, “How about this one,” Katharine held up a drawing of a dress that the port seamstress had put together for her.

James looked up from the naval chart he was pouring over, trying to figure out the safest way to Barbados to check on the settlement there and provide aid, “It looks rather like the same one you showed me yesterday.”

Katharine turned the drawing over so she could look at it and found that he was correct, it very much did. Oh the sleeves were a bit different and the bust had slightly different accoutrements but it really did look the same. The seamstress that had given her the drawing had said that the sewing pattern was highly in demand. A popular fashion trend. Katharine had no idea what that meant, or why it mattered, “We’re both helpless you know that right? I can’t tell the difference either.”

She put the drawing down and leaned back in her chair rather defeated, “Have you given up on asking Elizabeth for help?”

“You know what she’d say,” Katharine said to him, they had discussed this already before. Never an argument, but in hushed voices that bordered it, “She has all these beautiful grand ideas that neither you nor I can afford, and she would say that she would pay for them but I don’t want to go into our marriage together with you in debt to her family.”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t put us in debt,” James replied.

“Of course she wouldn’t. Because it’s Elizabeth and she wouldn’t ask for any sort of coin in return,” Katharine said, taking a sip of her morning tea, afraid it was slowly going cold, “But it’s not about that. It’s about knowing that she did this for us, and we could give her family nothing in return.”

“Considering all the work you did for them in their home -”

He trailed off but Katharine knew what he was angling at, “That’s a terrible way for a friendship to exist, James.”

For a second, he paused and then he folded up the map. A clear sign that he had decided that this conversation would take priority, “I’m not saying that she owes you -”

“That’s exactly what you are saying.”

“Alright that is what I’m saying,” he sighed, “You’re right, it sounds terrible and rather unscrupulous.”

“See?” Katharine raised an eyebrow, “I hate the idea.”

“Well it is an idea, at least consider it,” he implored her with eyes that he knew she couldn’t say no to.

With a sip of her tea that had absolutely started to chill, Katharine said, “I will consider it.”

And that was the end of that.

\---

In the end Katharine didn’t end up having to ask Elizabeth anything at all. Instead her friend showed up at her house a few days later with two separate dresses, and the town seamstress. Both dresses were far more opulent than anything that Katharine would have worn normally, but she had to admit that they were beautiful. They were in a delicate cream, and each had large skirts and some of the most delicate embroidery that Katharine had ever laid eyes on. Staring at them it was as if she suddenly understood fashion in a way that the drawings could not convey. Katharine was sure that The Queen and actual royalty had nicer gowns but Katharine had never seen a royal in her life - save in paintings her father had sometimes traded - and so these gowns seemed magical, “Turn for me,” Elizabeth told her and Katharine did, holding her arms out, “I think this is the one.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that then,” she put her arms down, “This might be the most expensive thing I’ve ever worn.”

“Well it makes you incredibly beautiful.”

Elizabeth’s words made Katharine’s cheeks redden and she was very glad for the lack of pallor in her skin. While she recovered from how Elizabeth’s words had made her feel, the house servant began helping Katharine take the dress off. The servant made sure she was very careful to not damage the fabric. If it did, their debts would surely be impossible to repay. Meanwhile the seamstress started to take notes in the notebook she had brought with her, “The good news is that I will have to make only minor alterations,” she told Katharine, “Your form seems made for finery.”

Katharine turned to look at Elizabeth, “Are you sure about this?”

“Completely. I pay for the dress and you pay for the alterations. Therefore we both pay for the thing that we can afford. I know both you and James are helpless when it comes to this, so someone has to step up and help. And I’m not much better when it comes to money, but at least I know a good corset from a bad one.”

“Or no corset,” Katharine commented.

“An aggressively tight one does make fighting a little difficult,” Elizabeth admitted, “Although hopefully we’ve seen the end of undead pirates,”

It was a relief really that Elizabeth was taking this off her shoulders. That her friend knew her well enough to know that this was the best way to go forward with this. That Katharine would have never asked on her own, “Have you picked your dress yet?”

“God no,” Elizabeth let out a long breath of air, “Not like I could. My father is in talks with some man in England who knows someone in Paris who makes gowns, and he says he has it all planned out. Sent in my measurements and everything. I would argue but I think after all I put him through three months ago he deserves to dote.”

“That sounds far too complicated for me,” Katharine admitted.

“It’s far too complicated for me as well,” Elizabeth said, “Which is why I’m glad he’s taken over. If it were up to me I’d sooner marry in a nice dress by the ocean. A small affair. Not the massive affair I’m sure it will end up being.”

“Do you trust his taste?”

“I suppose we’ll find out.”

At Elizabeth’s declaration both women began to laugh and did not stop for some time.

\---

Their wedding, despite everything, was not a small affair. Katharine should have known after Elizabeth’s warning about her own wedding. But Elizabeth was the daughter of a Governor. Katharine was a humble merchant’s daughter. There was nothing special about her save her father’s gun and the adventure she had shared with Elizabeth and Will. Small things. Really.

Instead, when Katharine had originally pictured her wedding she had envisioned she and James, Elizabeth and Will, the minster. Maybe a small roaring fire. But she had forgotten that James was a Commodore. With all the pomp and circumstance that came with a high ranking naval position. So instead of what Katharine had pictured, they married at the fort overlooking the sea and what felt like the whole naval division of the port was there. It was romantic - Katharine couldn’t lie. The way the sea glimmered behind them, and how James looked at her as if she was his whole world. But it was also terribly formal. From the outfits to the simple music. No wiggle room for imaginative vows. And some of the women kept giving her looks the whole time. As if she had stolen the port's most eligible bachelor. Which Katharine supposed she had.

It didn’t help that Katharine hated attention which made her itch at her dress, which she only did once. To her relief. After it was over Elizabeth told her she had caught the itch but that she was very proud of her. Incredibly so. It was the party after the after party that was far more important to Katharine anyway.

She sat with Elizabeth and Will along with James in her, it was hers now, drawing room. Wine had been poured for the women, but both Will and James had gone for something a little stronger and Katharine envied them. She preferred rum too, so she said so, “Would anyone mind if I had rum instead of wine?”

“As long as you do not let it go too hard to your head,” James warned her.

“Only a little bit,” Katharine promised nodding to the servant.

As the servant left the room Katharine watched as Elizabeth placed her hand on Will’s leg and gave it a small squeeze. He glanced at her and they seemed to share some sort of private conversation that had him nodding, “Wedding gifts,” he eventually admitted, “We bought wedding gifts.”

“Your father already gave us a boon,” James said, “I thought that was your gift.”

“This is from us, in particular,” Will said, “We owe Katharine a great deal of thanks.”

Katharine thought they had already repaid what they thought they owed her ten fold. For the emotional support Elizabeth thought she had given her when they had been taken, to merely existing as a place where James could put his heart, to her work in the house. But she would allow them this final gift, and then no more, “This will be your last gift,” she told Elizabeth with a straight face, “Then no more.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth said.

However the way she said of course seemed questionable, and Katharine had a hard time believing her. When Will handed her the long parcel covered in cloth and she pulled it back. Katharine had to admit that it was a kingly gift. For there sat, a perfectly balanced sword that so matched the one that James had been given a few months back. Elizabeth had been right though, this was only a wedding gift that Katharine would understand alone, and not to be given out in front of polite society. Katharine let her hand stoke up the blade and then looked up at the two of them, “Thank you.”

“To happy futures,” Elizabeth held up her glass.

“To happy futures.”

\---

A week after they married James returned to the sea. Katharine came down to the docks to see him off and prayed that he returned to her. And he did. And he did. And he did. Each trip seemed long, but really only a month or two passed in that way. Katharine got used to seeing him in seconds, in minutes, in a day. In short passages of time marked by when he was in their bed, hand on her back, lips against her neck. On his third return from shore leave she came back late to their home, to hushed voices in their sitting room.

As she walked in a man walked out and James’ face looked grim. He looked at her, his mouth set in a hard line, “I am being sent after Jack Sparrow on account of The Crown being unable to capture him.”

“But that defeats the whole purpose,” Katharine said, “The whole reason for turning our back.”

“I know,” he told her, face still drawn, “If I fail they are to remove my post. My commission.”

“We can live poor,” Katharine replied, “I am not afraid of it. I have done it before.”

“It’s not about the money,” and Katharine could tell that the next thing he said would ruin her, “The whole reason you were not hung was because of my station.”

It snapped then, in the back of her mind, what James was trying to tell her. What the man who had come here had told him, “They threatened me,” she said.

“If I fail they will return you to jail again. No hanging, but you will rot there, in England.”

England. Not in Port Royal then, where they knew that Elizabeth or her father, or any number of people would fight to keep her out of jail. In England she would have no allies. Katharine sat next to him and took his hands in hers, held them in her lap and felt how warmed they were, “You will not fail,” she told him, “And when it is done we will have our life back.”

“When it is done,” he said voice haunted.

“Yes,” she said to him softly, “When it is done.”

“As long as you are my anchor, I will do everything in my power to return to you,” he promised.

So he went out to sea. And he returned to her, and he returned to her, and he returned to her. Until there was a storm. And he returned to her no longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somehow I feel like this is more depressing? I'm not sure yet. It is a bit needlessly cruel but at least this time Norrington wasn't going into a storm because he was depressed that Elizabeth had turned him down.
> 
> Either way, this chapter and the next will be doing all the necessary character building between movie one and movie two. There was about a year between each film, and while the movie drops you into it right before Elizabeth and Will get married, by that point Norrington has already disappeared and I wanted to focus on why and what that does to Katharine after. 
> 
> I also do a bit of name play here where I switch from Norrington to James for purposes of Katharine's POV.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	7. Part 2.2: The Reversal of Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine adjusts. Relationships continue to grow. A second wedding is attempted.

Katharine does not grieve. Not in the way that was expected. Instead two days after the news of the storm, and the news her husband had perished, she showed up on Elizabeth’s doorstep with a notebook and a face that was all steel. Her dress was black, but it did not match the mood inside her that raged. At lost chances. At a home that didn’t feel like home anymore. Losing her husband had changed her, but she would not let it change the relationship and friendship that she had with Elizabeth. Elizabeth seemed stunned at her arrival but she invited her into her drawing room anyway and the two of them reminisced together over tea and over what little memories they had of him together.

Finally when enough time had passed, and they had bonded well enough, Katharine told Elizabeth what she had come to her home to say, “I want to help you plan the rest of your wedding.”

Elizabeth looked surprised at Katharine’s words but not too surprised, “Are you sure? It’s been so soon since -”

“Since James was declared dead.” Katharine refused to sugar coat what had happened, “Yes I know.”

“If this something you need,” Elizabeth pressed, “I would hate to just be a stopper to any emotion you should feel or need to feel.”

“To be completely honest I feel as if I’m going crazy in our home. It always felt empty because James was off at sea, but because I knew he would return the emptiness did not bother me. Being alone has never been difficult for me. However If I stay in that house another second I think I might actually go a little insane.”

It was the truth, for all it’s barbs. For the past two days Katharine would wake up, she would brush her hair, put on a dress, and walk around the house cleaning this or that. But it was starting to drive her mad with how little she knew it mattered. James would never come home. He would never sit across from her at the table as they discussed his voyage, and he would never read to her late at night in an attempt to make up for all the time she had lost working at Elizabeth’s manor. There would be no kisses in the =morning, or at night. Not any more, and the emptiness of the house, Katharine could not stand it, “I can only imagine, it must be terrible.”

“It’s like living with a ghost,” Katharine admitted, “And knowing that ghosts are real almost makes it worse. As if I’m waiting for him to return and move something out of view, just so I know that he’s returned to me. Even if he hasn’t.”

“There’s only one thing to do then,” Elizabeth told her.

“So then you’re in agreement,” Elizabeth said.

“Oh of course,” Elizabeth smiled in that way that told Katharine that what she was going to say had nothing to do with either of their husbands, “You must come live with me.”

“Live with you?”

“Not as a servant of course, but as a friend. I need a grounding force here and that’s always what you’ve been to me.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“I miss you. I miss walking downstairs and seeing you reading in the morning when you think my father will not catch you. I miss conversations over dinner. And I especially miss your lack of judgement. We have plenty of spare bedrooms.”

Katharine missed all those things too. She had still done them as much as possible, but over the past few months the frequency had dropped off. It would be nice. To live with Elizabeth again. As friends this time. Not bound by any social limits but the ones they chose. Still, she hesitated, “And your father won’t mind it?”

“Let me deal with my father,” Elizabeth said, “You can deal with the rest. And, if you are serious about helping with what little remains of the wedding plans, it will be easier to do it from my home than from here.”

Katharine wanted to turn Elizabeth down, but her heart was too broken and too laid bare to say anything but, “When do we begin?”

\---

Light shone into the kitchen as Katharine walked around tasting the food in front of her. Currently she was on menu duty. Elizabeth had already picked out a number of different food stuffs for the party following her nuptials and was trusting Katharine, who had been to a scant few expensive parties, she had reminded Elizabeth - to pick out what food was good and what wasn’t. They had put a plate of shucked oysters in front of her, and Katharine was sure they were supposed to taste good but all she could feel was slime at the back of her throat. Like she had taken a sip of sea water from a wine glass, but without the pleasant texture of water. However people with too much money and too little sense liked oysters didn’t they? She swallowed, “These are fine,” she told the man holding the plate in front of her and crossed her fingers that she had made the right decision.

In front of her the side door of the kitchen, which led out to a small garden, opened and Will walked through. Face still covered in a little bit of soot from the forge. In the past few weeks Katharine had spent more time with Will alone then she had been expecting. Because of this the two had come to know each other a little better, aside from the number of ventures they had been on together. All of which had been mostly for Elizabeth’s benefit.

She had discovered too, that she and Will got along rather well. At first Katharine had thought that Will was overly serious and quiet, but he had a humor about him that she hadn’t been expecting. A sarcastic wit that he only brought out in front of people that he trusted would not judge him. Or as a rather funny and well placed defense mechanism. He also understood trade, and the two of them had spent many days debating the merit of different trades. Will of course preferred arms trade, because it helped business. But Katharine had always been partial to fabrics. They sold well, and were easy to trade because good fabric was always in demand.

In front of her Will grinned, and Katharine rubbed the side of her cheek. Will’s eyes widened - smile dropping off his face - and he tried to rub the rest of the soot off, “Thought I got it all,” he said.

His attempt to clean himself didn’t go as well as Katharine thought he was hoping, and instead he managed to just rub a bigger mark of black up the side of his face. With a sigh Katharine grabbed a spare cloth off the large preparation table and tossed it to him, “You only made it worse.”

“Says the woman who has a slime of a sort all over the side of her mouth.”

“It’s the god forsaken oysters,” she plucked the towel out of his hand when he was done with it, “I don’t understand rich people's food. Why can’t they enjoy a well cooked fish or a pig on a spike like the rest of us.”

“Oh they enjoy a pig on a spike as well,” Will laughed, “But it has to be in the middle of some grand display along with some unknown fruit that might give you the runs if you eat it.”

“That’s rude,” Katharine told him joining him in laughter, “That’s so terribly rude.”

“You are the one who is joining me in laughing.”

She was. She had been, “Well you’ll be well to do soon, so you should get used to the frequent trips to the chamber your highness.”

There was the sound of a cleared throat and both of them turned to look at Elizabeth who was standing in the kitchen, her arms crossed. Despite the raised eyebrow Katharine knew that she had been amused by their conversation, “My father has utterly lost his mind in picking out the correct breed of white rose. I told him it doesn’t matter, but he says that some stay whiter longer and have better color. It’s nonsense.”

“Wasn’t he debating that four days ago?” Will asked.

“So you can see my dearest frustrations,” Elizabeth said, “Someone please join me outside in the garden so I can take my mind off all of this.”

“Mentally?” Will asked.

“Physically.” Elizabeth answered him.

That was something else the two of them had started doing since Katharine had moved in. Both women found a great deal of pleasure smacking the hell out of each other with swords. Elizabeth because it was a way to get rid of the stress the wedding was causing her, and Katharine because it gave her something to do that wasn’t wedding related, and it helped keep her mind off the fact that her husband was dead. To add, every time she used the sword Will had given her she felt closer to James. It helped her feel like he was there with her. Somehow. Even when he was not. Could never be. Truly, without it, Katharine feared that the two of them would have gone a bit mental with the pressure of it all.

Katharine removed the apron she had been wearing while she had been tasting the food and turned to look at Will, “Come with?”

He shrugged but on his face was a smile, “If I must.”

“Good,” Elizabeth said, “Because I may need a second person.”

“Is it really that bad?” Katharine asked.

“Oh worse.”

Their voices trailed off as they wandered out into the garden, leaving the food behind. Katharine could worry about the rest of it later. There was still time, after all.

\---

It looked like rain the morning of Elizabeth’s wedding - which should have been an omen - but the weather had been off and on cloudy for the past week so it was hard to say if the skies were truly going to break that day or if this too was something that would pass. Therefore there was no halt to the planning. No one stopped to think if the teacups shouldn’t go out or if the music stands with the music that Elizabeth had so painstakingly picked out - and Katharine had been humming all yesterday afternoon - should not be set up. However an hour later the first large drop smacked against Katharine’s bare arm and she knew that the sky had been an omen.

Fifteen minutes later and the rain was coming down in torrents. Katharine met Elizabeth under the cover of one of the awnings that had been decorated so delicately and they both stared out into the mess of the yard, “Ships were spotted in the harbor,” Katharine said, “East Indian Trading Company.”

“I know,” Elizabeth answered, “I had heard rumors that things were not wholly well here, Especially after James perished, and I had seen my father come out of his study looking defeated but I had hoped -”

Katharine had seen the same, but it had been easier to go on normally. Because what else could they do, “Do you still want to try to get married?”

“We have to try don’t we?”

Katharine stuck her arm out into the storm, and it felt frigid on her skin despite the warmth of the rain, “That’s all we can do isn’t it?”

It was what they had been doing the past year, and now it seemed like everything was closing in on them. That it had happened so quickly and so swiftly, on the worst possible day, “Yes,” the two women shared a look.

“I will go get my sword,” Katharine told her, “Just in case.”

\---

The sword ended up not mattering. Halfway to her effects, men stormed the home, and Katharine could just make out Will between them. His arms were in chains. She paused on the stairs and reversed her trajectory following them down the stairs and outside where a large number of them had grouped up and surrounded Will and Elizabeth. She tried to push forward but was heckled backwards by one of the men and had to watch in abject horror as Elizabeth was arrested.

Her heart beat in her chest as she waited for them to say her name along with Will and Elizabeth’s but no such name was read. It was good to be the widow of a dead man, her mind whispered to her in a snide voice that sounded very much like the voice of the man who had just read off Elizabeth’s sentence.

She shook it off. No need to wallow in guilt now.

The rest of the day felt like a dream. Reversed of what had happened almost a year ago to her. Only now it was Elizabeth in chains and it was Katharine who sat in her home surrounded by nothing but plans in her head. Plans that she had run through multiple times with no fair idea of how to make them work. She didn’t have money and she couldn’t just commandeer a ship, and oh how quickly Katharine’s mind had turned to piracy the second that Elizabeth had been threatened.

But, and now her mind whispered to her in her own voice, hadn’t you grown complacent over the past few months? The wife of a naval officer, the friend of the richest family in the port. Katharine had gotten used to things being easy, even after James had disappeared in the storm. Never to be seen again. She longed for them to be easy again even if that moment seemed to have passed her by.

She was turning these thoughts over in her mind when the door creaked open and Weatherby Swann stepped into the room, “Mister Swann.”

“Miss Norrington.”

She turned so they were eye to eye, face to face, like equals because now maybe they were, “How may I help you?” She asked.

“I want to free my daughter,” he confessed into the space between them, “And I think I may need your help.”

“Why me?”

“Because I have a feeling you have a great understanding of piracy, even if you hide it well. Am I wrong?”

He was not, “I do,” now was not the time for petty lies.

“And you’ll help me?”

Katharine grinned at him, “Oh my lord, I would love nothing less.”

He opened the door and Kathryn followed him, plans already cycling through her head again. Better plans. Now that she had a benefactor. This time, she really would need her sword.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dead Man's Chest at last! Like in the films, things are going to get very messy before they get better. All I can ask is that I hope you trust the process. 
> 
> There's also a lot of character work in here. The continued steady and growing relationship between Katharine and Elizabeth but even more so regarding Will and Katharine. They are not as close as Elizabeth and Katharine but there is a definite friendship there between them now, which I am pleased about. 
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


	8. Part 2.3: The Connected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine and Elizabeth escape Port Royal and beyond.

Katharine almost felt like James as she stood over a number of naval maps and tried to figure out just where Jack might go, and the truth of it was she had no idea. The only place she knew where he had once made his residence was Tortuga, and so she circled it on a map. As much as she trusted Governor Swann, she did not trust the men he relied upon to safely bear them hence. So while he worked to figure out how to get Elizabeth out of prison, she worked on - well, a second plan. A better plan. Or at least one that was not so dependent on trusting a few good country-serving Englishmen to come through.

She could not buy them a ship, Katharine had realized, but she could do - as Governor Swann reminded her - a fair bit of piracy once Elizabeth was actually out of prison. It should not be hard for them to find a vessel that was on the shadier side. One that was going to a newly established pirate port. One that could be convinced to go elsewhere. She tapped the very new, and hardly a speck at all, Port of Nassau. From the way people at Port Royal whispered about it, there were at least a few pirate sympathizers there. Not many - as the Port was just barely standing on its feet when it came to its own burgeoning history as a pirate port town - but maybe enough that a ship traveling there could be considered dubious at best. If they boarded a boat to Nassau, it might be easy to convince them to sail to Tortuga instead.

It was a shaky plan but it was a plan. If there was a ship docked at Port Royal going to Nassau. If. So much depended on so many factors coming together. But Katharine had hope. Destiny seemed to favor them. Despite the hardships and the many setbacks. She wasn’t sure what to make of that, since Katharine hardly believed in such grandiose things. Sometimes luck was just luck. Sometimes it was just good planning. A series of points intersecting.

Katharine walked across the room and began to thumb through the ship arrival schedules that Governor Swann kept on his desk. She flipped through a number of pages and finally found the schedule for that night, scanning down the page, Katharine’s eyes read the ledger until her eyes stopped on one ship. It had arrived from Nassau just the afternoon before, filled to the brim with fabrics. It was always fabrics. She grinned. Fabrics were a common pirate good her father had told her. They sold well, and were easy to offload without being suspicious. This was her ship.

Maybe there was something to this whole destiny spiel after all.

The door across the room clicked open and Governor Swann walked in, “Tonight,” he told her, “We move tonight.”

Well that didn’t give Katharine much time, but if she was good at anything Katharine thought, she was good at putting a plan together last second. Sort of. Hopefully. She folded the map up and tucked it under arm. There were things to do and her mind was already creating a list in her head of what she needed to do. What she had to get. For them to survive on the high seas alone with no crew and just their wits and a gun or two.

Plan finally in motion Katharine left the office to return to the bedroom that Elizabeth had given her at the mansion. The first thing that they would need were disguises, people were not very kind to women on the high seas and especially less kind in pirate ports. She still had the uniform she had worn when she had met James, but that wouldn’t be welcome among pirates. It was too shiny, too unworn. She would stick out like a sore thumb. No, their outfits had to have a bit of wear and tear. Something that made them look as if they had been on the ocean for a little bit of time. As if they belonged there.

The next thing they would need were swords and at least a pistol between them. They were lucky then that this house had those in spades. Crawling under the bed Katharine retrieved the box with her father’s pistol and the sword Will had made for her and placed it atop her bed. Next she wandered through the house for some time until she was able to steal a sword from Governor Swann’s collection. He wouldn’t miss it, Katharine was sure. He had so many. And Elizabeth needed it a fair deal more. Katharine brought this sword back to the room and also placed it on the bed next to her effects.

The outfits would be harder but some of the male servants in the house were leaner in stature and had a few casual outfits for when they were out on the town. They also remembered that Katharine had been one of them before. They were not friends, but servants still had a sense of camaraderie between them, even after the fact. With a few traded coins Katharine had two sets of spare outfits to use. Including a belt for Elizabeth, vests, and boots. Back in her room she dressed in the clothing and tied her hair back away from her face. It was longer now, but it was still short enough that it looked like the hair of any man who wore it long, as was still in fashion. With a hat, she would be fine. When she found a hat.

Both swords she placed in the belt she hand managed to keep from the pirate she had knocked unconscious on the Black Pearl. The rest, Elizabeth’s outfit, her father’s pistol, they all went in a well-sized cloth bag. By the time she was done, she had enough time to eat what might be her last meal in Port Royal, and steady her beating heart. Under her feet things felt so uncertain, but Katharine was determined to meet them. No matter what. When she had finished Governor Swann found her, “It’s time.”

A glance outside told her that the moon now hung heavy in the sky, he was right. It was time.

\---

Elizabeth walked quickly through the street and Katharine followed her. As Katharine had fortunately - or unfortunately - predicted things had not gone well. They had gotten Elizabeth out of jail, but their carriage had been intercepted by one of Cutler Beckett’s men. Katharine grit her teeth. She had found a distaste for Cutler Beckett. The man who had arrested Elizabeth. Who had separated her and Will on their wedding day. He was a shrew of a man. But he was a shrew of a man who had the ability to change their lives with just a simple ink stroke. Just his name.

Instead of heading to find a ship that could take them away from the port Elizabeth was well incensed to do something first. Get a pardon for Will - or get arrested again trying.

With Elizabeth’s determination in mind, Katharine followed her up the winding road that led to the building where Beckett was staying during his tenure here. While Katharine did not think that what Elizabeth was doing was exactly a good plan, she also wasn’t going to stop her. If what Elizabeth said about the lack of available pardons was true, then the only way that Will was going to see this conflict out safely was currently in that room. In fact, that pardon might be the only way for any of them to have a normal life ever again. Something that Katharine would not mind after all this passed.

Whoever controlled the ports, controlled the pardons, Elizabeth had said. They stopped in front of the building and Elizabeth looked at her, “Play look out for me?”

“Play? I’d rather think I’d act, this is a bit of a serious situation.”

“It’s all the same,” Elizabeth said, “Wait here.”

Then she was up the steps leaving Katharine alone on the street. For a few minutes not much happened. The night still, wind ruffling the strands of Katharine’s hair. Then there was a loud ruckus and a group of two sailors - probably coming home drunk from the pub - wandered by. They were singing a tune terribly out of key and Katharine whistled to both men, “Aye, boys.”

They turned to look at her, “Not safe for a woman like you to be out and about at night,” the larger one said.

“You can walk me home later then,” Katharine said and the shorter one laughed at that, “Two coins for both of your hats.”

“Just the hats ma’am?”

“Just the hats. Maybe something else another night.”

That caused the larger one to laugh as well, “Well, I can’t say no to a bargain like that.”

Despite the dark, and the danger that came with trading with strange men in the dark, everything went off without much of a hitch. A few minutes later Elizabeth appeared again, in more dire straits than she had left. She held the pardon in her hand and she handed it to Katharine to put in her bag. Item stored safely, Katharine handed Elizabeth the outfit and the hat she had procured through trade, “Put it on. It will help us blend in with the men. They won’t take kindly to women sneaking into their ship.”

“Jack didn’t seem to mind that we were women.”

“Jack was an oddity, you know that. It will be safer this way. Each man is different and I’d rather not take the chance.”

“That’s one way to describe Jack,” Elizabeth grinned.

Elizabeth disappeared into the shadow of the building and came out dressed in the outfit that Katharine had gotten for her. Katharine had to admit that Elizabeth looked good in it. Male clothes suited her and Katharine felt her cheeks heat at the thought. No matter, they were both disguised and this would do them a world of good later on, “You look good. I think we just might pull it off.”

“What would I do without you?” Elizabeth asked.

“You’d be fine,” Katharine answered, “I have to assume.”

Then they were down the street, stealing into the darkness and using it as cover to escape Port Royal. To find safe passage away from this place. As the ship pulled out of the harbor Katharine stood at the rail, and watched the houses fade. The building lights looked like stars that twinkled in the night sky, and then blinked out.

\---

The ship they found themselves on - the one that Katharine had chosen - was perfect. It had been easy for the two of them to slip in disguised as men. No one had questioned them at all. Then, with a little bit of trickery involving puppetry, Elizabeth’s dress, and Tortuga written on the ship’s main deck in fire - they were on their way to Tortuga.

Katharine found herself sitting near the bow of the ship while Elizabeth helped sweep up the mess she had made. She was contemplating the length of the voyage, when a young boy came to stand next to her. He was stocky in build for such a young child, and wearing all black. For a boy, he already had one too many guns. They overwhelmed him. Around his neck was a silver necklace, a rich prize for someone his age. It sparkled in the moonlight. He seemed far too experienced for this ship, “I saw that fine trick you played on the men.”

He was also incredibly observant for his age it seemed, “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Katharine said, “If men want to believe in ghosts that’s their choice.”

“Oh, the sea is full of ghosts,” he told her, “But not the kind these men just thought they saw.”

Katharine wondered what sort of stories people had been telling this child, “I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Elizabeth said having finished her job, and leaning the mop against the rail of the ship, “Is this your new friend?”

“Edward Teach,” he introduced himself, “And I’d hardly call us friends.”

“He saw right through us,” Katharine told Elizabeth.

“I suppose someone would,” Elizabeth paused and then said, “You’re not going to tell?”

“As long as Nassau is the final destination, I have no reason to tattle on two women who think they know better than this simpleton of a captain,” his language spoke of a boy who was well read despite his age.

That was good news then. Katharine turned so she could look over the deck, leaning on the rail to hold her steady, “So since you don’t seem to be on this ship because you like the cut of the captain - why are you here?”

“I’m not so hair-brained as to be sharing my story with two women I just met,” he told them, “Sorry to disappoint you ladies.”

“I bet he’s running from his parents,” Elizabeth said and her theory made Katharine laugh, “Young boys do crave adventure these days -”

The boy in front of them scowled and then began to walk away, “I won’t be subject to the gossip of women looking to laugh at me.”

As he walked further across the deck and disappeared out of earshot Katharine said, “He wouldn’t have left if it wasn’t true.”

This turned their laughter into full blown high pitched giggles which they had to stifle as one of the crew members walked by. Wouldn’t do to get caught now. Now when they were so close to their destination.

\---

It was night when the ship pulled into Tortuga. The crew departed first. Followed by the two of them and Teach - who had drawn the short straw of being in the same boat as them - rowed to the docks. As they stepped out he looked at them with a serious face, “Be careful. The men here like to drink a lot, and it makes them think they know better than the people they look down on”

It was sweet of him to give them advice, as unwarranted and unnecessary as it was, “We will,” Elizabeth told him.

As they left they could hear him mutter to himself, “Your kind, always think they know best,” to which the last remaining crew member on the dingy laughed.

Katharine had to assume by your kind, he meant women. Better to say that, than to out them. He had kept his promise.

From then on Katharine let Elizabeth guide her. She had not been here before, and neither had Elizabeth but Elizabeth had Will’s stories to go off of. Stories that Katharine had heard in passing but that Elizabeth - she was sure - knew like the back of her hand. They came then, to stop in front of a tavern from which they both heard a great deal of fighting and rebel rousing. With a sigh Elizabeth pushed open the door and Katharine followed. Only for the sound of fighting to almost fade into the background.

He looked - the same. A little worse for wear, a little darker around his edges, and a fair bit drunker than she remembered, but the same.

Just as Katharine remembered him.

Time seemed to stand still as their eyes locked, “Katharine,” he spoke her name like a whisper.

“James,” she returned to him the same.

“I thought I would never see you again.”

“I thought you were dead.”

She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to shout at him, to be angry and furious for so many things. For not coming back to her. For letting her wallow in grief she had not let herself feel until this very moment - because to feel it would be far too painful than to pretend that it was not there. Instead he said, “Sword,” as a cutlass from the fight swung towards her head.

Later then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so excited to get to this chapter. Teach is supposed to be between the age of ten and thirteen here. He's so ornery. I love him. Teach is basically the glue that holds these stories together as you'll see later down the line. He's great and I love him (wait I already said that). Also this is the chapter that officially invalidates the fourth film as I'm using canon Edward Teach from Black Sails and not canon Edward Teach from pirates. 
> 
> And hey! James Norrington is alive :) so Katharine can be happy about that. Also this chapter was originally named The Reunited but I figured that would give the game away.
> 
> Thanks for reading!!


	9. Part 2.4: The Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine is reunited with James.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unlike the chapter with Death in its title this chapter's title is just as dramatic as it needs to be.

Katharine ducked under the sword swung at her head and smacked the man who attacked her with the flat side of her sword twice, forcing him to walk a little closer each time, until he was close enough that she was able to punch him in the face with her fist. Now, Katharine wasn’t one who thought violence solved all of her issues no, but after a run in with a number of pirate crews, and having seen it solve problems on more than one occasion now she was quiet coming around to it.

It had after all - been the thing that had freed her from Barbossa - and had saved James. And Katharine, despite everything, had taken part in all of those festivities. In fact, shooting Barbossa on his ship and watching him go down had been a great release. She hadn’t known it at the time of course, but just seeing him downed by her father’s gun had done a lot to repair the anger that she felt towards him. Now mind - he had still killed her father - so she still hated him, but she no longer wished for revenge. And the violence of that shot into the back of his head, had helped a great deal.

So it was hard to truly write off violence in its whole entirety. But this was a different sort of emotional release, and she didn’t hate it. It was helping her relieve stress in a completely new and original way. With each passing blow she found herself less and less angry at James and decidedly more curious about why he had not come home. Katharine had her suspicions but she much rather wanted to hear the answer from his mouth. instead of guessing and being wrong. Assumptions would only make her rude. And close her off to reconciliation. Neither of those were acceptable now that James was alive again.

Not that he had been dead at all.

Next to her, despite the alcohol, James was keeping up rather well, and the two of them danced around each other. Keeping their sides safe for the time being, much like they had back at the pirate cove. Defending the ship from the undead forces of The Black Pearl. Considering that Katharine had thought him dead, and that they hadn’t fought like this in some time, Katharine was rather pleased. They still fit together perfectly.

Still the men in the tavern were closing in, and as much as their little fight had done her some good, all things had to come to an end. Soon she, James, and Elizabeth found themselves against one of the support beams in the tavern, with a rowdy crowd of pirates around them, “Well, what do we do now?” James asked, potentially just a little bit more sober than he seemed.

Without very little hesitation Katharine yanked him forward and brought their mouths together. The kiss was a bit unpleasant, as she could taste far too much liquor on his tongue. However as they leaned into it - leaned into the cheering and the yells around them that incensed her to kiss just a little harder, just a little longer, just with a bit more of an open mouth - Katharine found herself in dire need of a bedroom. But there was no bedroom. Just them, and James’ mouth upon her own. Relentless, and claiming. It was only knowing that it had to end that let Katharine pull back. His eyes gleamed and hers gleamed back. With a turn to the crowd that had gathered to watch their spectacle Katharine said to them, “Well what are you looking at? Get back to your drinks.”

There was a cheer before the crowd began to break up, and next to her Elizabeth snorted. Mission accomplished.

\---

Jack by some miracle was in fact in Tortuga. As they followed him out into the street, James’ arm wrapped around her waist, and his hand brushed against her belly. Katharine knew that he was a bit drunk, and they still needed to talk but it felt good to have his hand back where it belonged. On her body, a declaration of his love for her. She couldn’t help but smile as she chided him, “You will have to tell me exactly why you didn’t come home. I’m still upset at you, a little kissing and one sword fight won’t solve all our problems.”

“You will get your answers,” her promised, “In due time.”

In front of them Jack was doing his best to ignore them until Elizabeth finally called his name, “Captain Sparrow!”

He turned a scowl marring his features, which spoke of how annoyed he was to deal with them. However considering that he was the whole reason they were here, so they could find Will, and Katharine knew how persistent Elizabeth could be - well - he was going to have to face them one way or another, “Come to join me crew, lad? Welcome aboard.”

Avoidance it was then. Katharine knew it well. It had been a great ally to her after she had thought James dead. She had gotten lucky. Jack would not share that fate. Their terrible disguises or not, it was clear as day to whom he was talking to. He was good at playing the fool but even he was not that stupid, “I'm here to find the man I love,” Elizabeth told him.

“I'm deeply flattered, son, but my first and only love is the sea.”

This was getting annoying and Katharine was rather sick of it, “Don’t be daft Jack,” Katharine told him, “You saw James and I kissing back in the tavern.”

“Elizabeth,” he glanced over at Katharine, “Katharine,” and then back at Gibbs, “Hide the rum.”

While Elizbeth and Jack hammered out whatever deal they planned to make James turned to her and said, “Remind me why you saved this man again?”

“Because we owed him a debt. Which has been paid, in some part. Also I do think that his rescue did play some small part as to why we are married today. We have to put up with it. As much as it may bother us.”

“Ah,” James grinned and then promptly swallowed, his smile gone, “I may actually be a bit sick the first little leg of the voyage.”

The rest of the conversation was logistics and while Katharine did her best to pay attention she was still so overwhelmed to have James back that she found it a bit hard to follow. From what she could gather, Will had gotten tied up in working with Captain Davy Jones, who up till that point, Katharine had thought a myth. That the so called farrier of dead men at sea, had a chest with his heart in it, of which whoever owned the heart, had power over said Captain.

It all seemed rather far fetched, and James did point out once or twice that Jack seemed to be evading some details about the events leading up Will’s capture and why Jack wanted the heart, but it didn’t seem to matter. They had Will to find, per Elizabeth’s desire, and Katharine was dead set on seeing her friend’s goal through. No matter the cost to her, “So how do we find it?” Katharine asked, “Considering present circumstances.”

“With this. My Compass... is unique.”

James glanced down at the small box, “‘Unique here having the meaning of broken.”

“True enough. This Compass does not point north.”

Katharine hated when people were vague, “Where does it point?” Elizabeth asked.

“It points to the thing you want most in this world.”

Ah. That explained it then. Her voice sounded sarcastic in her head. No matter - if it found them Will - Katharine could not complain. Not that the compass could be of any use to her. She looked up at James, she had already found what she wanted most in the world after all.

\---

Katharine had let James corner her into the back of one of the cells that made up the brig. His hand rested steady on her back, and her fingers curled into the wooden rail above her head. His head was tucked into the curve between her neck and shoulder and he placed kisses there, their breath growing louder into the only empty space they could find on this ship. Their bodies rocked together, the ship groaning under them. Everything blurred together - faster and faster until - Katharine’s fingers tightened around the wood for a second. Knuckles white. Then her whole body fell into James’ chest for support, spent. He let her rest there, as they got their composure back. Her breathing slowly evening out, “That was a terrible idea,” Katharine said after some time.

“I don’t know,” he smirked up at her, “I think it was a pretty wonderful one.”

He extracted himself away from her rather ungracefully as they both worked hastily to re-fasten pants and re-buckle belts that hung open, “So are you going to tell me why you let the world believe that you were dead or am I going to have to guess?”

“Well,” he looked upward towards where the deck of the ship would be, “As you can see I failed rather spectacularly in my quest to capture Jack Sparrow.”

“That much was apparent.”

He sighed, and Katharine knew that he was being rather more serious now, “If I came back a failure that last time, I knew I would lose what little worth my name had as a naval officer. It would have not been enough to protect you. I could not see you jailed again.”

For her. The true meaning of his words was hidden under everything that he had just said, he had stayed away to protect her. To protect what little was left of Katharine’s good name after they had married. To protect the life that she had made for herself at Port Royal. She remembered how the building lights had blinked out when she had left and she missed them desperately, missed their house among them. Missed sword fighting with Elizabeth in her garden, laughing with her over some dumb joke Will had said, the way the two of them stayed up late reading together. James had given up everything for her. For Katharine’s sanctuary.

It was romantic. It was beautiful. But Katharine was tired of him having to give up everything, even if that was the reason they were married. He deserved so much more than what life had given him. So much more than being drunk and depressed because he could not return home. Katharine had been given so much, and he had lost so much, because of her. She never wanted him to have to give up anything ever again, “And this was better? A ghost to your own dead ambitions?”

“I cannot do anything here as I am, I cannot go back. They would dismiss me all the same,” he told her, and then squared his shoulders and Katharine knew whatever he said would be worse then what he had said before, “Before you arrived at the tavern I was offered a deal. The heart of Davy Jones. It could earn me a pardon.”

“Do you want to take it?”

There was a pause. A pause that Katharine knew was longer than James had wanted, by the way his lips pursed when he answered her, “My job meant everything to me but -”

Katharine turned so she was staring at him and reached up to cup his cheek. His warm hand covered hers and in that moment Katharine knew what needed to be said, even though she knew that it would be hard to say it, “You should take it.”

And wasn’t that the crux of piracy? Turnabout and betrayal, friends backstabbing friends? To take what you could and give nothing back? James’ leaned in so their foreheads touched and Katharine could feel as things shattered around them like glass.

\---

Finding the chest had been just as easy as Jack had said. The compass had led their small party right to it.

It was everything after when things truly felt as if they had fallen apart. Will was alive to Elizabeth’s extreme pleasure, but needed to pierce the heart to kill Davy Jones. For anyone who pierced the heart became the new captain, and took up ownership of The Dutchman and the curse. He needed this so he could free his father. Who was cursed aboard said Flying Dutchman. This was a twist that Katharine had, in her many years, not seen coming.

Everything truly was a mess.

Then for all Will needed the heart Jack needed the heart as well to stop Davy Jones from killing him. It all felt far too complicated really. The heart at the crux of it all. While each member explained why they needed the heart Katharine tried to hold it together. Because she had promised James’ down in the belly of the ship. Whatever it was that he needed, she would support him. She had signed her name on the betrayers doctrine, and she would follow it through.

James attacked first and with the clash of swords the three of them began to fight further and further and further up the shore line trading blows and grabbing at the key to the chest that dangled from the hand of the man who had it. Which switched often, “Did you know about this?” Elizabeth asked as the fighting intensified, “About any of it?”

“No,” Katharine lied to her, the first true lie that she had ever told Elizabeth.

“I’ve had it you know,” Elizabeth said as they followed the men, unable to stop the fighting, “I've had it. I've had enough. Enough of these wobbly-legged, rum-soaked... pirates!”

The last word Elizabeth spit out like a curse.

“It does get to be quite a lot,” Katharine told her, falling into the role of liar far easier than she thought she would. Behind them Katharine watched as two of the crew members from the Black Pearl picked up the chest and meant to run off with it. A perfect diversion from the mess she was about to get herself into, “By the way, I think those two mean to take the treasure for themselves.”

Elizabeth looked where Katharine’s eyes had wandered, “I believe you’re right,” she grimaced and looked down at her empty scabbard slot. Her sword had been there, until Will had grabbed it just before the fighting had started, “But only one sword among us.”

“Well, one sword and my father’s pistol.”

They took off after the two men and things would have gotten heated between the four of them if not for, and Katharine could not believe her eyes, the fish faced pirates that sprang from the brush after them, trying to get the chest. The men gave chase and as they did Katharine watched as the chest was dropped and left in the brush during the chaos. She followed with Elizabeth for a short time blocking a sword stroke and then shooting the fish faced pirate in the face with her gun, and hoping that these men were also not some sort of invincible and having very little faith. Undead pirates seemed to be everywhere these days. She looked at Elizabeth across the smoke from her pistol, “I’m going back for the chest.”

Elizabeth nodded, and Katharine wished that Elizabeth had just a little less faith in her. Turning she pivoted on her feet and traveled back towards where the chest was only to stop behind a tree. Jack was sitting on the ground with the chest open, and she watched quietly as he took the heart out and tucked it in his shirt. He was interrupted by another one of what Katharine thought must be Davy Jones’ men and began to run forward toward the shore. Katharine followed at a safe distance, knowing that he had not seen her as they caught up with the battle.

Remaining hidden from Jack’s sight Katharine watched he picked up a jar and deposited what had to be the heart into it. Not a moment too soon, because a giant wood mill wheel came crashing down through the forest and out into the sea, and from it, almost like some sort of woodland creature stepped her husband. She spared a glance at Elizabeth and the crew fighting Davy Jones’ pirates and then turned to help James out of the wheel. As he steadied himself Katharine steadied her heart and then kissed him once, softly, before leaning over to whisper, “The heart is in the jar.” He looked down at her stricken, “Take it, and run.”

Katharine didn’t give him time to say anything in return. Instead she turned away from him, sword drawn. Joining the fighting with the people who had been distracted by the fighting to see what she had done. As their paths diverged she could feel the world turn, and tilt on its axis. Just a little askew under her feet.

Betrayal indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is very rude. I told you Katharine makes very dumb choices when it comes to the mindset of "I want good things for James" in this case though the choice is very... not smart. Unlike the movie where it's all James, Katharine is very very heavily involved in his decision to take the heart. And that's okay! Katharine is very flawed. It's one of the things I love about her. She's full of love, and full of dumbass choices. 
> 
> I think sometimes characters need to mess up and see what they don't want, before they realize what they do want. And this is one of those moments that can lead to that. This is such a turning point for Katharine though in how it changes everything, which you will see later on. 
> 
> As I said earlier - the writing style for this is small choices lead to an eventual big outcome. Which we haven't reached yet.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	10. Part 2.5: The Damned and The Found (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine had a discussion with an unexpected person.

Katharine had a motto which was quite simple, never regret anything. Or when that failed, love yourself enough that you could make peace with what you’d done. Currently and despite everything, she was fine. Really. Completely. It wasn’t as if this motto had failed her occasionally or was failing her now. At all. It was true that because of her they had nothing to bargain against Davy Jones - and yes - she hadn’t known that one of those things they needed to bargain free of had been an actual massive kraken. A kraken which Davy Jones had control over. However Katharine was here on the ship ready to go down with everyone like the Judas she was. What was good for Elizabeth, who still knew nothing of Katharine’s betrayal, was good enough for her. She would die with them - with Elizabeth - and that was enough. It had to be.

At least until it all caught up with her. Whenever that was. If she would even live to see it.

A number of the kraken’s long arms climbed up the outer hull of the ship, rubbing against the wood and making the ship groan. Then the arms began to flop onto the deck where they inched forward. Gross. Also terrifying. Katharine let her hand drift to her sword and she swallowed her fear. Below crew members had started to ready the ships guns and everyone waited on baited breath. A stand off, as they calculated the perfect moment to attack, “Will?” Elizabeth called down into the gun hold where the men stood-by for the order.

Will intoned caution. Too early and they wouldn’t do enough damage for the arms to retreat. Too late and they would be dead, “Hold. Hold…”

Katharine was getting tired of holding, and the word ‘hold’ as it rang around in her head. If she was completely honest. Things on the deck had grown exponentially worse as more arms started to raise above them, readying an attack, “I think we've held fire long enough,” the stockier pirate Katharine had elbowed a year back and of whom she still did not know the name, said.

“Will??”

Elizabeth’s voice was higher this time, and Katharine agreed, considering the fair large amount of arms and suction cups she was seeing above deck. Too many, “Fire!”

The sound of booming cannon fire filled the air as the guns easily made their mark against the arms of the kraken. The beast hissed as flesh was torn from its appendages, parts of said flesh dropping into the sea with loud plops. Some of the excess scattering on the deck of the ship. In clear pain, the arms of the kraken quickly retreated back into the sea. There were cheers as Katharine, Will, and Elizabeth peered over the rail and into the ocean, “It will be back,” Katharine said looking at Will, “Won’t it?”

He nodded confirming her fears, it wasn’t time to celebrate yet. If at all, “We have to get off the ship.”

They all looked to where the rowboats should have been but found debris. There would be no escaping this fight. Not without a fair deal of luck, “There’s no boats,” Elizabeth commented.

A barrel of gunpowder rolled out from the wreckage of the rowboats, and Katharine could see a plan formulating inside Will’s brain, “Pull the grates! Get all the gunpowder onto the net in the cargo hold,” he plucked a gun from the hands of one of the crew members, and handed it to Elizabeth, “And whatever you do, don’t miss.”

As he descended below decks to help make the makeshift explosive, Katharine pulled out her father’s gun and held it out for Elizabeth, “He said don’t miss.”

Elizabeth nodded and the two traded weapons. They began to gather the needed materials that Will had commanded they collect, and they had almost made it when chaos erupted both on the upper deck and down in the cargo hold. Screaming followed. Screams and dead men.

The arms came fast and thick, grabbing at anyone they could and Katharine narrowly dodged between them before she was able to find a cubby hold to hide out in. Using the long musket she had traded with Elizabeth for Katharine steadied her stance with the gun - and the frizzen to center her gaze - and fired. The arm attacking her withered away from her in pain, but another two crashed through the side of the ship. Shrieks and chaos whirled around Katharine like a storm but she could not look away.

To look away meant death.

She wondered why she was trying so hard to survive, considering all she had done, and then buried the guilt as deep down as it would go. Guilt didn’t mean regret, but it was the inklings of it and she didn’t want to regret giving her husband part of his life back. Not yet. Not when to fall into such traps could mean losing her concentration during this fight. There were more important things to worry about at present. Such as getting Elizabeth and Will out of this alive.

Katharine ducked under another arm and let it wrap around the gun when it reached for her body. It yanked the gun away leaving her with just her sword. Better the musket than it pull her into the deep. However it was a short term solution in a battle filled with short term solutions. The kraken was closing in around them, and soon they would all be but flotsam. They would all be but bodies in the water. A ball of fire reflected in her eyes and Katharine stumbled backwards as their makeshift explosive well - exploded.

As it did, the arms of the kraken that had climbed up it, and after whoever had been in the net, pulled away. Still smoking, parts of them ash.

Head ringing from the boom, Katharine’s gaze worked to put the pieces together about what had happened. The only thing she knew was that the kraken was momentarily stunned. And Jack was holding her gun. Somehow. As she unstuck herself from her hiding hole, she walked towards the smirking captain. He seemed far too pleased with himself. Their goddamn savor. Katharine watched as he twirled her father’s gun as if it were a toy. No reverence for the thing that Katharine loved, “I’ll be taking that back.”

She snatched her gun from between his fingers. Jack grinned at her, “No harm no foul darlin’.”

Katharine didn’t say anything more to that, but tucked the gun away neatly at her belt. It was time to abandon ship. There were so few of them left but Jack had brought a dingy back with him. Now it was either run… or die.

\---

Katharine was alive. And safe, which was more than she had thought would be possible when she had traded her safety for her husbands. But now - now she didn’t know where she was or truly who she was. For so long she had lived for the enjoyment of the sail under her father’s command. And then, she had lived to avenge him. After, she had lived for love and for her husband, and from the joy she derived in the tender yet fierce partnership she had with Elizabeth. A number of those things were gone, and in the silence the guilt crept in. And so too did the regret.

She had survived, and that had not quite been the plan.

But then she had fought hard for her survival, and now away from it all, Katharine could not understand why she had done so. Clearly something in her wanted to cling to life, and maybe that would have to do for now. Even as her mind screamed at her that she didn’t deserve it. Any of it.

Safe for the moment, their little band of pirates sat hidden in a shack in the river-lands. It was home to a woman who Katharine had never met before. Tia Dalma. They were gathered in one of the rooms of her home, drinking for the fair departed Jack. Jack who had - what was it Elizabeth had said before getting on the dingy - stayed behind to save them all? It was him at the end of the day that Davy Jones had been hunting, and now the hunt was done. So they were free of his attention. Free of it at a high cost, “Never another like Captain Jack,” the skinny one with the wonky eye who Katharine could finally call Ragetti, said.

“He was a gentleman of fortune, he was,” Pintel the other one, she knew his name now too, replied.

“He was a good man,” Elizabeth said.

Katharine wasn’t sure how true that was but he had come back to save them, and he had died to protect them, so there had to be some kindness in his heart. Jack was too complex to nail down. Half coward, half hero. Slippery like the sea. But it wasn’t as if she had some sort of leg to stand on, when it came to judgement. Therefore when everyone made a toast in cheer to his good name, she joined them. It wouldn’t do her any good to be the odd one out, “If there was anything could be done to bring him back... Elizabeth -”

Will seemed truly put out that Jack was gone too, and Katharine knew that Will of all people had been betrayed the most by him. It stung even worse when she considered her own betrayal, that sat heavy in her chest, within her still beating heart. And as she sat there and saw the devastation that had been wrought she wondered - and knew - that Jack was probably dead because of her. She wrapped her arms around Elizabeth for scant comfort, “Anything,” Katharine promised.

Elizabeth put her cup down and leaned into Katharine’s arms, “Would you do it? Hmm?” Tia Dalma looked at them and Katharine felt as if she was reading into her very soul, “What would you? Hmm? What would any of you be willing to do?” Katharine wasn’t sure but she knew that was willing to do it, “Hmm? Will you sail to the ends of the earth and beyond to fetch back witty Jack and his precious Pearl?”

A chorus of ayes went up around their small motley crew and Katharine joined them, “Aye.”

“Alright,” she said with a grin, “But if you're goin' brave de weird, and haunted shores, at world's end, den... you will need a captain who knows ‘those waters,” Tia Dalma told all of them.

There was the sound of foot falls as a man walked down the steps and for a moment Katharine rested on hope. That it was somehow Jack Sparrow already returned to them, but then she saw the face, and heard the voice, “So tell me, what's become of my ship?”

Without thinking Katharine stood, cracked Barbossa across the face with her full fist, and said, “Not with this man,” before storming from the tent.

\---

Elizabeth found her outside staring at the hand that she had used to punch Barbossa. It was shaking. There were still tear tracks on Elizabeth’s face from what had happened inside and Katharine wanted to buckle and to admit fault and to do whatever was in her power to bring Jack back, but her body felt like a powder keg of rage the like she had never experienced. She knew instinctively that the sea and those who had been born from her, had mystical powers. It was impossible not to know, what with her own magic pistol and her father having been killed by an unkillable pirate as living proof.

However not once had she thought that the sea had the power to pull people up from the depths from which they had sunk. It was all so unfair that it had chosen him, instead of her father. Instead of anyone better, “He killed my father,” Katharine told Elizabeth, “I would do anything to bring Jack back, you know that. But I look at him and all I see is the image of his sword through my father’s gut. Of losing him.”

“I know.”

Elizabeth took Katharine’s hands into her own, to stop them from shaking.“Tell me something that will make working with him okay, tell me something that will stop it from hurting and I will gladly join him.”

“I can’t,” Elizabeth admitted, “All I can ask is that you do this thing for me. For Jack.”

Her words made Katharine laugh, bitter and she had to struggle with herself to force the rest of them down, “It’s what we do Miss.”

Katharine turned and found herself staring into the eyes of the man who she had just punched, “Don’t give me that, don’t turn what you did into something kind.”

“Your father chose to be a merchant, those that sail under the banner know the risks.”

“Choose as if there are many other options for people who look like him, who look like me.”

“Aye, the life at sea is not a loving one, it is not one that makes room for much more than the freedom of the sail and what one does with it.”

“I’m not -” she didn’t know how to finish her thought.

“Of course you are,” he looked around, “You’re here aren’t you?”

He had read right into her. The words ‘I’m not a pirate’ had sat on her tongue, but she had not been able to say them. And maybe this is what she had always been. Going from one ship to the next. And hadn’t she thought herself one, back when she had instructed James to take the heart? It had been a fleeting thought, but it had tucked under her skin along with the betrayal. She had also told Elizabeth that there wasn’t anything to hate or fear in being a pirate. And Katharine refused to have life make a hypocrite out of her. Fine then, it wasn’t like it changed anything. Life before the realization was just the same as life after, “I reserve the right to retaliate against you again if I think you’re slipping into old habits that I detest.”

“If I had known you would have been such a firecracker I would have taken into my crew had I found you instead of leavin’ ye,” he grinned at her.

With a smirk she slapped him across the face with an open palm. The second time she had hit him since, “I see we are in agreement then,” she said.

“Aye.”

Twisting she turned to look at Elizabeth who had remained silent throughout their whole exchange, “Let’s go rescue Captain Jack Sparrow then.”

Elizabeth whipped off a few of her tears, “Yes.”

Barbossa held the flap to the tent open for Katharine and she looked at him out of the side of her eye, before she accepted the offer and went back inside. Some things were more important than personal grudges.

END PART TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dean Man's Chest over! 
> 
> Mostly the same other than Katharine making a terrible no good mistake in helping James take the heart. Katharine is far more forgiving than I would be with dealing with the person who killed her father, but at this point she'd do anything to rescue Jack as long as it made Elizabeth smile. Especially considering her guilt. And pirates are forgiving each other for just... everything, all the time. Katharine is no different.
> 
> Next chapter we go into the build up for At World's End, and then go into the film proper. Thank you for reading.


	11. Part 3.1: The Flute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans are made to rescue Jack, Katharine dreams.

Katharine leaned over the side rail of the ship and watched as the waves parted for her father’s ship. Behind her, men wandered around tying knots, pulling ropes, and occasionally stopping to look out over the horizon. Her father’s quartermaster - a Spanish Romani - was at the wheel. He was a long time acquisition after they had stopped over in Barcelona to pick up supplies. He had only recently been promoted to quartermaster after her father’s last quartermaster had switched ships for a better offer a few months back. The man was sturdy, and the crew loved him, thus his new position, but he didn’t have much experience at the wheel and her father had decided that today was the day.

Unlike most men, Katharine’s father ran his crew more like a pirate ship than a vessel of The Crown. Every man got his fair share, and the crew voted on all positions besides The Captain. It made for a happier ship life, he said. Even if he and Katharine were a fair bit poorer for it. And he was right. Katharine pulled back from the railing and began to run over to the erstwhile quartermaster - mostly to bother him - at the exact moment her father stepped out of his Captain’s Cabin, “No running Katharine!”

He was terrified that she was going to go over the rail someday but Katharine trusted her father as a Captain. He was seasoned, and knew not to go into storms or how to avoid the choppiest water while maintaining speed in the ship's topsails, “I just want to talk to Mateo, father.”

The look he gave her was severe, “Mateo is learning how to use the wheel. If he loses concentration the whole ship could go under.”

This was a lie. Katharine knew it was a lie because her father lost concentration all the time around her. The ship never went under when that happened and Katharine crossed her arms, “Then what am I supposed to do? I’m bored and you won’t do sword practice with me because you’re too busy pouring over charts.”

“Go pester Simon in the hold. He will keep you company.”

Simon was the person who had lost the vote of quartermaster by one to Mateo. He was a natural entertainer and Katharine had a bit of crush on him. Often her father would steer her away from the man, citing the desire to protect his daughter from ruffians. So if he was sending her off to be with Simon then he must truly not want her underfoot. With a huff she walked down the stairs and down into the ship's galley where she knew Simon would be. Where he always was.

As she got closer she began to hear the notes of the flute. Simon was an avid player. He had been since they had picked up a number of long wooden flutes a few months ago. He must have had practiced before they picked him up, Katharine thought. Because he played beautifully. They were not supposed to steal the merchandise, but Simon had spirited one away anyway. Now he was often found in the galley playing his instrument for the men as a bit of well-intentioned cheer. Keeping the crew entertained in the downtime. As Katharine appeared in the back of the room he looked up at her, “Come to listen, Katharine?”

“My father says you are to teach me,” this was not the truth but Katharine was upset at her father, and anything to get under his skin was more than okay with her.

He smiled and Katharine did her best to stop her face flushing. He was far over twenty and she was fourteen. She knew that he was too old for her, but that didn’t seem to stop the desire or the flush of her skin. He was tall, and broad shouldered, and reminded her of the officers in the books that her father bought for her. He gave the table on which he was sat a pat and Katharine climbed up onto it as he handed her the flute that he was playing, “The first thing one must learn when playing an instrument such as this, is breathing control. How to make the right shape with the mouth,” Simon told her.

Katharine blew into the instrument just as she had seen Simon do many times but only a shrill unpleasant sound came out. She let it drop from her mouth to look at him, “What am I doing wrong?” She asked.

“It took me some time to get used to playing,” he winked, “I sounded just as bad when I started. You’ll get the hang of it.”

“Do you promise?”

His smile when he answered her was blinding, “I promise Katharine,” he stood up, “Wait here,” for a moment he disappeared into the sleeping quarters and then came back with another flute, “Here.”

“You stole two!” Katharine exclaimed, “Father will cast you out to sea for ruining the trade.”

“The flutes sold well. Your father will do no such thing,” he handed it to her, “Practice Katharine. Can you promise me that?”

She nodded and let her hand trail up the beautiful wooden carvings on the side. When she looked up Simon was nowhere to be seen. Instead she heard banging, and all sorts of yelling and screaming. As she ran up the stairs to the topside she watched as pirates scurried around the ship, the arms of the kraken dragging them into the sea. In front of the ship a maelstrom raged, and a ship she had never seen before sat across from it. A crack of lighting blurred her vision. Then she was in a small rowboat watching The Black Pearl sink into the bottom of the sea. In her hands the flute felt like a lifeline.

Katharine woke up.

\---

They had been in the hidden swamp lands of Cuba for just a few days and already Katharine was starting to feel the itch to do something. For the most part she had stayed out of the planning. Sometimes too many cooks could spoil a meal or make things more difficult, and Will, Barbossa, and Elizabeth seemed to have things well in hand. She was shining her father’s gun to perfection when she heard shouting coming from inside the hut at her back. First Barbossa’s sarcastic lit, followed by Will trying to temper him, and finally Elizabeth. A moment later Elizabeth pulled the flap of the hut back and came to stand right next to Elizabeth, “I’m sick of men. Especially male pirates,” she said by way of explanation.

“Not going so well?”

“Why does everything have to come down to sex with them? My body is not a distraction to flaunt around.”

Katharine aimed the gun at nothing, “Men are stupid when it comes to physical attention though, its true. Very easily distracted.”

Elizabeth turned to glare at her, “Just who’s side are you on?”

“The side that moves forward the plan to rescue Jack,” Katharine told her, “Is that not what we are supposed to be doing?”

After the disaster of The Black Pearl, and after Katharine had some time to think about it, she had come to the conclusion that she had been far too rash at the outset. She did not regret selling everyone out so that James could have a crack at the heart. Not at least when it came to James getting what Katharine felt he was owed after England had wronged him. However Jack’s sacrifice had made her even more fond of him than she had originally been, and if she was honest she missed his chatter. It did help fill up empty space. And, despite being one of the greatest liars she knew, he was good at defusing tension. Katharine did regret what had happened to him.

The lack of one regret, Katharine rationalized, did not preclude the other. So she missed him. Not immeasurably, but enough.

Fondly enough in fact - that she was fully onboard with this plan to rescue him. So they could return to the status quo. Return to before. Whatever before was. And it came with the added bonus of undoing what she had done. Her own betrayal - made right.

It didn’t help that she was actually starting to like Barbossa. The man who had killed her father was not the man they were working with now. Oh he was a pirate though and through, but he was not as cruel as she had first presumed. It made her wonder if some of the terribleness had been the curse, even if it was just a little bit of it. Nothing like eternal unauthorized undeath to make a man crazy, “Stop being so reasonable,” Elizabeth said.

“Someone has to be,” she put her gun away, “Do you know what we haven’t done in some time?”

“I enthusiastically agree,” Elizabeth said, “Let me go get my sword and I’ll make a mockery of you.”

“Not before I make a mockery of you,” Katharine said in return.

Elizabeth went inside the hut and returned again a few seconds later holding her sword, something she had been given as a replacement for the one that Will had stolen from her.

Together the women stomped through the brush to find a clearing. Holding swords at the ready they flourished and bowed, a bit of a play around pirates really, and then began to trade blows. For about an hour they set upon each other with a few breaks in between, until their arms began to tire. In the moments where they could look at each other over their swords it felt just like old times. But it was not enough to make Katharine completely forget what she had done. Nor why they were here in the first place.

There was so much work to be done. So many plans to be made. And Katharine would see it through. For Elizabeth. And for Jack.

\---

Night had fallen and they were just a few days out from their voyage. Will had already left the day before as per the plan to bargain for the chart. A chart which Barbossa said had information on how to reach wherever Jack Sparrow had been sent to after his death. It was going to be a long journey and Katharine was still trying to wrap her head around leaving The Caribbean for seas further afield in the east. It would be different, to be sure.

She was currently laying in a hammock, a book she had found in Tia Dalma’s house, in her hands. The woman had told her that she could pick anything to read if she so desired and so she had chosen this one. It seemed to be a handwritten book on the nature of magical sea artifacts and Katharine had picked it mostly because she had been curious if there was mention of her father’s pistol. So far, no luck. Instead she had stumbled upon a different page of writing that she found she could not ignore because of her dream a few days prior.

The page spoke of a flute called The Flute of the Seas. It had once belonged to the captain of a ship that was said to have had the magical ability to control the ocean, particularly the physical aspects, ships and the cannon fire. Wherever his cannons fired they met their mark. At one point he had been fighting a swath of men and all of their pistols, aimed directly at him, had jammed at the same time. Hardly a coincidence. Despite the savagery of his piracy he had been a good captain to his men, and was fond of playing his flute on long voyages. If he’d lived now, Katharine was sure he would be a king on the ocean. Unfortunately his ship had taken in a rather peculiar sailor who had over time, aroused suspicion in the men over just how their captain came about his good fortune. The outcome had been mutiny and a war aboard the ship that had sunk both it and the good captain into the depths.

As the captain had died it was said that he had cursed the crew to eternal damnation, and cursed anyone who tried to recall his ship from the depths, as he wanted no one but himself to reside as its captain. The flute however had been found and over time the legend of what it could do had grown. It could call forth the damned English Rose of which the famed pirate had captained, and those that called forth The Rose could be granted a boon. Just the one, with a terrible caveat. Death followed soon after to those who asked for her grace. So soon that most men did not get to enjoy that which the ship had given them.

The other thing, it was said, was that the flute had absorbed the captains own power over the seas. Thus the name, “Many men fought an’ died for that which ya’ looking at.”

Katharine snapped the book closed and looked over at Tia Dalma who was hovering just behind her hammock, “It’s real?”

“As most myths are,” she grinned a crooked grin, “Though you won’t fin’ it here.”

“Where is it?” Katharine asked curiously.

“In de’ home of de’ Brethren Court. Protected by de’ pirate lords.”

“So that no one can use it against them,” Katharine surmised, “And they cannot use it against each other.”

“Aye.”

Hearing about what the flute did, sparked something in Katharine that she didn’t want to examine too closely, “I think that’s quiet enough reading for me tonight.”

“Don’t run from what ya feel,” Tia Dalma warned.

Easier said than done. Katharine put the book down onto the floor under her hammock, “I think it’s time I got some rest,” she told the woman, “Goodnight.”

“Sleep well,” Tia Dalma conceded.

Leaning over she blew out the candle that sat on the stool next to her bed. The next morning when she woke, the book had been blown open by the wind, and Katharine stared down at the exact same page she had been reading the night before. As if The Flute of the Seas was taunting her. Calling out to a future that Katharine knew not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love what little of Katharine's father's crew we get to see here. I imagine the ship being run as close to a pirate ship as possible. And Katharine has a type for sure - longer brown hair, brown/hazel eyes, strong. I'm not saying Simon looks exactly like James Norrington, but I imagine a lot of similarities between them. Like the first chapter of each part, this one is a lot of world building for what is to come.
> 
> At World's End is a fair longer film with more turns and a lot of ground to cover, so next chapter we'll be getting into it pretty quickly.


	12. Part 3.2: The Signals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The haunting of Katharine Norrington begins.

Katharine believed in ghost stories, to a point. Life had made its mark on her in such a way that she had to. However she had never seen herself as haunted. Maybe unlucky, maybe marked in some way by tragic events but not haunted. Haunted required a certain - spiritual element that she had never attached to herself. Katharine was not spiritual. Or she hadn’t been. It was hard to be when things such as God with a capital G seemed so hazy in this ever expanding world. In a world where pirates could come back to life. Where a kraken could roam the sea pulling ships and men to their deaths. But maybe one didn’t need God with a capital G to be haunted these days. Maybe one just needed to know of the ocean. Needed to realize that the ocean held a power all it’s own, divorced from the higher powers one read about as a child. Was taught about in churches or sitting in a mother’s lap.

So it was that as they finally prepared to set sail in the small ship that had been provided for them, Katharine found herself haunted by the story of the flute. She would go to bed and dream of it. Of the wood in her hands. The deep etchings on its sides. Sometimes she would fling it into the ocean. But it would always come back to her the next night. Demanding she pay attention to its physicality in her dreamscape. Katharine would stand on the shore of a Port Royal she hardly recognized - a tune calling her out into the sea - the flute almost humming in her hands along with the music. Sometimes she stood on the sand and just let the music wash over her, but other times she followed the call of the song and felt the tide pull her under.

She never resurfaced.

Elizabeth shouted at her and she blinked. The visions cleared from her brain like a fog lifting from a bog in the mid-morning. Across the sand Elizabeth was walking towards her with a number of guns wrapped up in her arms. Muskets, pistols, you name it, they clicked against each other, “Put these in the sloop,” she dropped them into Katharine ’s arms and she had very little time to adjust to the sudden bulk of it.

“I don’t think we will need these many,” Katharine said, “Isn’t this supposed to mostly be diplomatic?”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow, “Do you actually believe this will be diplomatic?”

“Well no,” Katharine answered, “But if we go in guns blazing they’ll have us on right away.”

“They aren’t for us Miss Norrington,” Barbossa said, joining up with them holding a few swords, “They’re for the surprise party.”

“I do love surprises,” Katharine laughed with just an air of a lie, baked into it.

She did not actually love surprises. But there wasn’t much she could do about the circumstances at current. Better to go with the flow considering her lingering betrayal. Maybe she could learn something in the process. Like how to love surprises.

Barbossa dropped the swords on top of the pile of guns and Katharine had to shift her weight, lest the guns and swords she was holding slide from her arms and into the sand, “Take these with the rest of the weapons to the sloop. We’ll be following momentarily,” Barbossa told her.

With a nod she took them to the small rowboat and dumped them inside before hopping in with both Pintel and Ragetti, “Alright boys, take us to the ship.”

They began rowing out to where the ship was anchored. It was just a small thing really, a simple sloop with three sails. But it was a good size for their small company, and Tia Dalma had said that she was fast for her size which was needed considering that they were going to be sailing halfway around the world. Next to her Pintel and Ragetti chatted between them. Their words were nonsense really, but the way they bantered was full of warm conversation.

Now that she had accepted that she was a pirate - fully and wholly without reservation - she found their comradery rather admirable. Not that she would tell them that. They were still rather vulgar in a way that even Barbossa wasn’t. And it wouldn’t do to give them any more ammunition to use against her. Part of her wondered what James would think about her new life, but hoped that when this rescuing Jack business was over she could return to him. To what he had made of his life. For now though, this took priority, “You okay lady?” Ragetti asked.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You’ve been doing a lot of distressed staring out into the distance is all,” Ragetti explained, “It’s getting a little,” he made a gesture with his hand that seemed to imply that her stares were strange.

“Maybe you should mind your own business,” she told him.

“That got you all worked up?” Pintel mocked her, “Quite a simple thing to get you all out of sorts. Hope your mood swings don’t ruin this for all of us. Fate of Jack rides on it.”

“I said, mind your own business.”

Both of them grunted but that was the end of the conversation - none of the parties wanting to further discuss the matters of Katharine ’s endless staring. Which was good, because a few minutes later they were at the ship and Katharine was passing up the guns before climbing inside herself, “Help me store these away,” she told Gibbs who cocked an eyebrow, but went about helping her anyway.

“Aye, let's get these put in storage.”

She looked back at the shore as Elizabeth and Barbossa boarded their own rowboat and swore she heard the notes of flute sound on the wind.

\---

Katharine had never been to Singapore, in all her father’s travels they had never made it this far. They had met up with men who had goods from the city to trade with, but her father had always preferred the trade on the Atlantic and within the Caribbean Sea. The journey here had been a long one, so Katharine understood why they had never traveled this far but she was glad to have been given the chance to visit here now, all the same. It was beautiful, for all that they were in dangerous territory. The water here was warm too, although it had not been for the duration of their trip. An ill advised pirate had discovered this when he had leapt into the water during a very short island pit stop. That had led to at least a few laughs from the crew and a great deal of mocking as the ship cut through the ocean. Elizabeth and Katharine had shared humorous glances but Barbossa’s mockery had been the worst of it.

Barbossa - who Katharine now liked even more now than she had when they had left Cuba. It was amazing what a long time on a ship could do for bonding relationships. On a voyage like this, you had to make right with your captain or it all came to shambles. And Barbossa, despite everything, was a good captain. He knew the right winds to catch, and just how to push the ship to get the most out of it. Who was the best person for each job, when he had to step in and get something done himself, when to stop to restock when it was necessary. He yelled a lot, but it got the job done. It had been a long but well earned voyage. And through his well versed command, they had made it to Singapore in one piece.

In front of Katharine in their small dingy, Elizabeth was singing softly. A pirate song, to mark them to anyone who knew the song. Known only to those who knew, “...the bell has been raised from its watery grave; hear its sepulchral tone? A call to all, pay heed the squall, and turn your sails toward home. Yo ho, all together, hoist the colors high. Yo ho, thieves…”

Their boat bumped against the dock and she continued to sing as they both disembarked trying to be careful of what was around them. A call and return of the song answered Elizabeth’s ditty, “...and beggars, never say we die,” two men stepped out of the shadows, “A dangerous song to be singing, for anyone ignorant of its meaning. Particularly a woman, particularly when there are two of you alone.”

“What makes you think she’s alone?”

Barbossa walked down the stairs in such a dramatic fashion that Katharine couldn’t help but roll her eyes, “You protect her?”

With a look Katharine and Elizabeth disarmed the two men. Elizabeth opted for a knife to the throat but Katharine pressed her father’s gun against the head of one of them instead. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know that it couldn’t miss, it was the threat that it implied really, “Who says we need protecting?” Elizabeth asked.

“I had quite the same question,” Katharine intoned.

\---

“That gun you have is too precious to be taken if they search ya Miss Norrington,” Barbossa had told her before they had made landfall in the city.

That was how she had found herself outside the bathhouse instead of inside where a great deal of either thievery or negotiation was happening. Katharine didn’t mind either, as long as they were able to get their hands on the map that Tia Dalma claimed would lead to wherever Jack Sparrow was. If she had to put coins on one of them though, she was sure it was thievery. Things between pirates never ran smoothly for one reason or the other. Which was a kind way of putting it.

The other thing that Barbossa had said was, “You might not like it lass, but by the color of your skin people will spare hardly a glance at the woman standing near the bathhouse,” and then glowered at her. He had been right about that too of course. A few people seemed to stop and stare briefly but they mostly kept their distance. She didn’t look quintessentially British, and she was sure they didn’t get a lot of people who looked like her around these parts unless they were in pictures. The awful sort of propaganda art that the British were fond of. With the exaggerated body parts and physical appearance. It made her shudder to think of it.

Now all she had to do was wait for the signal. Or any sort of commotion after things went poorly. She was willing to bet with a great deal of humor, that it could be either or. Or one and the same. Her eyes scanned the people walking around the city and then narrowed. Something about this whole situation was starting to not sit quite right with her. She continued to look, and that was when she caught it, two men in English uniform whispering to each other and pointing at the bathhouse. There had been a number of uniform officers when they had arrived, but Katharine had thought they had done a good job of avoiding them. Not so, it seemed.

They had been made. But not in the way they had been expecting. Turning she shot open the door to the bathhouse and was already reloading as she walked inside. A number of men rushed into the room to see who had broken into their meeting place at the same time Katharine could hear an explosion from the back of the bathhouse, “I believe you’re being invaded,” she told them, not looking up until her pistol was reloaded.

She pointed her pistol forward and shot again, watching as the two men looked horrified before they realized that they were not the gun’s target, “What was that for?” One of them cried.

“Once again,” she started reloading for a second time as a scream escaped from further in the bath house, “I believe you are being invaded.”

This time she turned and shot at one of the men who was coming through the front, watched him go down and grinned. At least her gun was finally killing people instead of knocking them unconscious. She holstered the pistol and drew her sword blocking two sword strokes from one of the men, before she ran him through. A second later Elizabeth and Will came through the open door to the backroom, and Elizabeth grabbed her hand as they tugged her along. Their hands were warm where they joined, and Katharine threaded their fingers together, “We ran into a bit of a negotiation problem inside,” she told Katharine.

“I noticed,” Katharine answered back.

Finally they reached the narrow crossings from which they had come. Forcing Katharine and Elizabeth to let go of each other. Here despite the odds against them, they were able to fight back as the men tried to funnel through the tight passageways. Two men approached Katharine and she blocked one sword before turning and quickly blocking the other. This continued for some time until she found her back pressed up against a stall and she picked up - oh - an apple and tossed it at one of the men, hitting him square in the face. The other armed man seemed so surprised to see his friend hit that Katharine was able to down him in his shock, before killing his friend as well.

Then she turned and ran farther down the raised walkway until she found a well fortified location of which she was able to duck. Protected by the makeshift barrier, Katharine reloaded her gun, and god she really did that quite a lot, before firing it into the crowd and hitting one of the officers dead in the center of his head. If only James could see her now, she supposed. As she started to put a new iron ball into her pistol a streak of light passed her by and she watched as an explosive firework hit a building and everything around her turned to color.

Well - if there was ever a sign that it was time to go - that was it. Putting her gun away she met up with Elizabeth and Will near the entrance to the docks they had arrived from. Will was carrying the map and he tossed it over to Barbossa, “You got the charts?”

Barbossa seemed actually surprised that Will had done what he had said he would, “And better yet, a ship and a crew,” Will answered him in return.

Well, their fortunes were much improved from a few minutes ago, “Where’s Sao Feng?”

It did appear odd that the captain they had come to ask for help was nowhere to be found, but Katharine did not want to question this streak of luck. Anything to get Jack back, and get it done sooner rather than later, was good in her books, “He’ll cover our escape and meet us at Shipwreck Cove.”

Katharine remembered that location from what Tia Dalma had told her. That was where The Brethren of the Coast was. Where The Flute of the Seas had been moved for it’s protection. One of Captain Sao Feng’s men nodded, “This way, be quick.”

With a nod Katharine followed, and it was not much longer until he had led them through a safe path inside the city, and to a much nicer boat than the one they had come in on. As she stared at it, something whistled a tune in her ear, and when she turned to look at where the sound had come from only found herself staring into the smiling eyes of Tia Dalma.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things continue to get well... not better for Katharine. Finally glad I was able to finally use Katharine's gun as it was intended this chapter though. There's a first time for everything. Also Katharine coming to like Barbossa feels like a turn, but I did the math and it would have taken them almost 80 days or so to reach Singapore, which is a very very long time to be on the sea with a person. Especially with nowhere to run. So of course her opinion on him would turn. Also in case it's not obvious Katharine values people who she believes are intelligent (your own thoughts on if she's right or not non-withstanding), and Barbossa is plenty intelligent. 
> 
> Next chapter is a pretty big one (and longer by a number of pages because of that). I ask that you go into it with an open mind.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	13. Part 3.3: The Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Those who are haunted are doomed to tragedy.

Their journey had taken them deep into the coldest parts of the ocean. Katharine shivered and wished that blowing into her hands would do any good. But it was far too cold for that. Instead she sat near the front of the ship, eyes ever forward. The sound of the flute had gotten louder as they had continued to sail, and although it was not yet constant Katharine could tell someplace deep down, that soon it would overwhelm her. She didn’t know why she could hear it so plainly but she knew it was tied to the moment she had read that book. That cracking open the spine of the novel had damned her to this fate. Something not yet manifested. Something she wanted to ignore.

She stared down at the back of her icey hand. At the softest part of her that still remained. As she turned it to stare at the valley of the lines of her palm, a second darker hand reached out to capture it. Katharine glanced up to once again find herself staring at Tia Dalma. Her brows knit. Wherever Tia Dalma was, the music followed. The woman seemed less bothered by the cold compared to everyone there. For such a small person, Katharine envied her. Their eyes locked and Katharine swallowed. She tried to pull her palm away but Tia Dalma held her hand like a vice, “Can ye hear it?”

Katharine blinked at her as Tia Dalma began to trace the lines on her palm, “I don’t know what you mean,” Katharine said back.

“Yes ye do,” Tia Dalma told her, “Sometimes I catch ye looking out da’ side of ship as if you cannot help ye self.”

Her fingers tickled as they continued their ministrations and for a moment Katharine felt - warm. But that was impossible. She had just been freezing seconds ago. Yet her breath came out hardly in a puff when next she breathed out, “I can’t stop hearing it,” she admitted.

“Destiny touched ye mind when ya read da’ book,” she continued to hold Katharine’s gaze confirming what Katharine already knew, “No reason ta’ be afraid.”

“It was just a book,” Katharine answered her.

“Just like Jack’s compass is just a compass, and ye fatha’s gun is just a gun.”

Katharine finally snatched her hands back and instantly she was shivering again, “Leave me alone.”

“There’s no reason ta’ be afraid of the ocean,” Tia Dalma said, “She loves ye so.”

But Katharine had heard enough. She stood, and despite being horribly overcome with cold she moved over to where Elizabeth was sitting. Tia Dalma’s eyes didn’t leave hers until she was seated, and then Elizabeth glanced at her and the attention the woman had paid to her was lost to Elizabeth’s concerned gaze, “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Katharine said, “It was nothing.”

“If I wasn’t so bloody cold I’d go over there and tell her to stop bothering you but I can feel the chill in places I’d rather not feel the chill.”

That made Katharine laugh, “You too?”

“It’s awful.”

When Elizabeth took her hand it felt warmer than Tia Dalma’s hand had ever been. This was the warmth she had been trying to find. The lie of Jack’s fate that sat between them kept it from fully blooming, but after, when things were settled - it would blossom fully Katharine thought. She smiled at Elizabeth and hoped that her eyes didn’t show the thoughts that sat inside them.

\---

Adventure books always had ships going over waterfalls. It was something that Katharine always expected every time a character got in a boat, on a river. The character always screamed, but lived to tell the tale. Those waterfalls were small and back on the calm of the river - the waterfall behind them - there was always even more terrible danger. Waterfalls in books were always a temporary escape. A turning of the page, that spoke to the longer adventure ahead.

The literal waterfall their little junker tipped over to take them into the land of the dead, was something else entirely. A massive cliff stretching as far as the eye could see. The water that plunged off it, tumbling into the dark unknown. For a brief moment Katharine had not expected to survive it, but her hand had curled around some spare part of the ship and then they emerged on the other side. Davy Jones’ locker, the crew whispered.

It was bright here. Endless white sandy beaches that went on for miles, and an ocean on the other side that seemed the same. A great purgatory for pirates. A great purgatory for Jack. Who was, at worst a little mad thanks to having remained here too long, and at best the same. He had walked among them a moment until he had realized that they were in fact real. Which is when he had said something that had left Katharine reeling, “Why should I sail with any of you? Four of you have tried to kill me in the past,” this had mostly been directed at Barbossa and Will, “One of you succeeded,” but that had been directed at Elizabeth and Elizabeth only.

The way Elizabeth had frozen just for a moment, Katharine knew that something had happened between them “He stayed behind’ was what Elizabeth had said when they had left Jack on the ship. Elizabeth the last to board. Hadn’t he? Katharine didn’t know anymore. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, to refute what Jack had said. To offer comfort to Elizabeth for what must have felt like such a heavy burden to shoulder alone. It wasn’t Elizabeth who had killed Jack. It was Katharine who had taken the heart away from him and ruined his chances at survival, but the words stuck to the back of her throat. Terrified that to say anything would be to lose Elizabeth who meant so very much to her.

When she had grown to be such a coward?

\---

They sailed for a matter of seconds, days, minutes, Katharine was not sure. It did not matter, through it all Katharine knew she had many chances to tell Elizabeth the truth. To open up to her friend, to comfort her in a way that no one else could. It would be so easy to say ‘it’s not your fault it’s mine’. Because Elizabeth had suffered enough, had gone through enough in such a short span of time. But Katharine hadn’t, and instead she had watched with terrible eyes, liar eyes, as they crossed through The Sea of the Dead and discovered that Elizabeth’s father was dead. And there could be only one culprit, The English. Cutler Beckett. The men Katharine had sent James back to, with the heart that gave them control of Davy Jones.

And Katharine’s fears had only grown.

What had she done?

Elizabeth had cried into Will’s arms and Katharine had thought to comfort her, but her own guilt had stopped her. Elizabeth didn’t deserve comfort if it came from someone who could not be honest with her. Who could not tell her the truth of what happened and take the blame away. Perhaps James would have discovered the heart all on his own. Maybe he would have taken it for himself without Katharine’s prompting, but she had. She had. She had. And now they would never know.

Elizabeth walked over to her in a daze and sat next to her on the steps up to the quarterdeck. Her head came to rest on Katharine’s shoulder, and still Katharine said nothing.

\---

A flash of green at sunset, their boat tipped upside down in the water, and then they were home again. Or topside, as it were. Somehow back in The Carribean as well. Jack and Barbossa had taken their leave to an island. To look for fresh water and food to resupply and Katharine paced the deck. In her head the music had gotten louder, but she found that she no longer hated it. No, instead something else haunted her, something more pressing. The truth. With a deep intake of breath she approached Elizabeth, if Katharine didn’t tell her now she didn’t know when she would have the time. Elizabeth looked up as she approached, her expression dark with current events. Katharine knew what she was going to say would make it darker, but she was tired of hiding it, “I have something I need to tell you.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something in return but what came out was, “Ship.”

Katharine turned, and sure enough there was a ship slowly approaching their stern. And rapidly. Will, who had been left in charge, seemed rather nonchalant about the whole thing. Katharine grit her teeth. This had been a set up from the start. Although for what she didn’t know. Katharine assumed she would find out sooner rather than later. It didn’t take long for them to be overrun, even less long for The English to join them. And once things were set in motion, it didn’t take but the time it took a maiden to sigh, for motives to be wrung from lips that had nothing to hide anymore. Motives that shifted as the conversation went on, “There’s no honor in remaining with the losing side. Leaving it for the winning side, that’s just good business,” Feng told them.

“The losing side, you say?” Barbossa asked.

“They have the Dutchman, now the Pearl.” Feng raised an eyebrow, “And what do the Brethren have?”

“We have Calypso.”

The moment he said the word the music exploded in Katharine’s head almost like a headache and she leaned on Elizabeth for support. It didn’t feel right to do so after she had wronged Elizabeth but she feared if she did not she would fall onto the deck and weakness was not something she could fully show right now. Not when surrounded by so many enemies. Not when Barbossa and Feng were bargaining and Feng had just asked for Elizabeth as part of the bargain to release Calypso. To switch sides from The English, back to the side of the pirates, and Elizabeth had said, “Done.”

And Will said “What? Not done!” at the same time that Katharine said, “As long as there’s room for two.”

Will’s comment was dealt with immediately. Katharine’s on the other hand was dealt with in time. Which is how she found herself on Sao Feng’s ship The Empress - along with Elizabeth - and hoping that this time, she would be able to find the time to tell Elizabeth the truth.

\---

She didn’t have time to tell Elizabeth the truth. Instead their ship was easy prey after the crew believed they had left The English behind. Another trap to lure them into a false sense of security. Instead, Katharine watched as Sao Feng died. Watched him name Elizabeth the new captain. Pass on his piece of eight so they could free Calypso. It had all happened so fast that her mental state barely had time to process it when they reached the deck in an attempt to flee, and she found herself face to face with her very alive, very decorated husband, “James.”

He stared at her in shock. Katharine elbowed The English man who grabbed onto her before catapulting forward into James’ arms. Her love for him overriding her common sense. As it so often did. His hand cupped her cheek and in front of all the men, rather uncaring of his station, leaned down to kiss her, “You’re alive,” he said once they had parted.

“I’m alive,” she told him, pressing her body into his, and then turning on the men who held Elizabeth captive, “This ship is taken,” she told them, “Let my friend go.”

“Do as my wife says,” James told them.

For a second they all hesitated and then let their swords drop. Elizabeth walked over to them and Katharine could tell by the look on her face that something was not right. Or maybe, that something had changed between them. James did not pick up on this cue, and instead he tripped right into the trap that had been laid, “Thank God you’re alive! Your father will be overjoyed to know you’re safe.”

Reality set in. Her joy at seeing James doused. Katharine felt herself stiffen in his arms, and she was sure that James felt it as well. A warning sign for the words to come, “My father’s dead.”

The words were said plainly but they cut like a knife, “No, that can’t be true, he returned to England,” James replied.

By his simple words Katharine felt herself grow even colder, was that what had been said? Was that the lie that he had been told by The Crown? She glanced up at him and saw his brow was furrowed as he looked at Elizabeth, “Did Lord Beckett tell you that?” Elizabeth asked, voice full of venom.

Before they could finish their conversation a voice cracked through the crowd, “Who among you do you name as captain?”

It was the first time Katharine had seen Davy Jones so up close. She had glanced at him previously for a second as The Black Pearl had passed The Flying Dutchman. Before the chase and before Jack had died. Now in the same breadth of space, Katharine could see why children were warned about him at night, “Captain? Her!” The whole crew pointed at Elizabeth, but Katharine thought it mattered not.

Davy Jones looked at Elizabeth like the idea of a woman being a captain was an odd thing to him. The way he walked towards her as well - after he learned of this - was only as a threat. He’d kill her if he got closer, “Captain?”

James turned on him, “Tow the ship. Put the prisoners in the brig, and the captain shall have my quarters. “

Elizabeth’s eyes hardened into stone that would have put any of the gems buried and lost at sea to shame, “Thank you, but I prefer to remain with my crew.”

“Elizabeth, I swear I did not know…” James spoke but trailed off.

Instead Elizabeth turned to Katharine and with a voice that spoke of finality said, “He picked the wrong side, make sure he understands that.”

And then stepped onto The Flying Dutchman with the rest of her crew.

\---

Their reunion, which should have been an occasion for joy, had only served to darken Katharine’s mood. She sat in the Captain's Cabin in The Flying Dutchman and stared at James across from her. Both of them were silent. Finally James said, “Does she know?”

“About my part in it?” He nodded, “No. I haven’t told her yet. I kept wanting to but, I could not stomach the words.”

“Katharine -”

“I thought I wanted you to be happy,” she told him, “I thought I wanted you to be happy and free and when this was all over I could return to the shore and return to you,” he opened up his mouth to speak but Katharine held up her hand, “But you are not happy. This cannot be happiness. Because if it is, I refuse it.”

She wouldn’t cry. She rejected the very idea. Not now, not when things were so on edge, “What would you have me do?”

His voice was grave when he asked her, “Help me rescue Elizabeth. I know it is a lot to ask of you, who is already under so much pressure but I’m tired James. I’m tired of pretending what I am is what I’m not.”

“And what are you?”

“A pirate,” she told him, “can you still love me?”

He stepped forward and gently tilted Katharine’s face so that she would look at him and the warmth in his eyes was such a staggering thing. She kissed into his open palm and he said, “I do not think I would have fallen in love with you otherwise,” he paused, “And I think, in my heart I may be the same.”

And Katharine could not find the lie when he said it at all.

\---

Elizabeth looked up when they arrived and made acknowledgement of Katharine as James unlocked the cage. When it swung open she took a brief moment to say, “I knew you’d figure something out.”

“I always do,” Katharine told her.

With a great deal of finesse James led them along the side of the ship, which had many divots and ledges for walking and to the balcony outside the Captain's Cabin. There, affixed to wood of both ships, ropes had been hung between The Flying Dutchman and The Empress. Pirates from The Empress’ crew had already started to cross but James stopped to look at them, “Do not go to Shipwreck Cove. Beckett knows of the meeting of the Brethren. I fear there may be a traitor among them.”

Something about the way he spoke tickled something inside of Katharine, something foreboding, “It’s too late to earn my forgiveness,” Elizabeth said while Katharine tried to work out exactly what it was.

“I had nothing to do with your father’s death. That doesn’t absolve me of my other sins.”

Everything came together inside of Katharine where the foreboding feeling had born fruit. He couldn’t be. She refused to even consider it, “You’re coming with us,” she said.

Katharine looked at him and she was sure that her eyes were wild. Behind them Dutchmen crew were calling out, hunting for them, and the feeling that Katharine knew now, turned to mold in her chest. James ignored her and looked directly at Elizabeth, “You must take care of her.”

“I promise.”

No. Katharine refused. He couldn’t be doing this to her. Not after they had just found each other. Promise given from Elizabeth, he turned back towards Katharine as she shook her head, “No.”

He kissed her, and it was soft and kind and full of desperation. Katharine clung to him and now, oh now she felt the deepest regret. It covered her whole body in rot and poison, of which James blanked with his love. She hadn’t meant for this. She hadn’t meant for any of this at all. Something wet hit her face and she realized that he was crying. Was she crying? She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t just stand by and watch. He left her tenderly, and her hand went for her sword at the same time Elizabeth grabbed her wrist and pulled her towards the ropes, “If you do not go, I will not go,” Elizabeth told her.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Unable to take her eyes off him as much as she could muster Katharine climbed onto the ropes and followed Elizabeth. Their hunters had caught up. There was a shot. The ropes fell plunging them into the water below. Katharine surfaced and between blinking droplets away from her eyes, watched as one of the crew members plunged a sword through her husband’s heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot stress the tags of this fic enough as we come to the end of this chapter. I really can't. This chapter also went through so many title changes until I settled on this one.
> 
> Katharine is not a great person at all most of this chapter, save near the end where she sort of starts to wake up to the reality of what's happening. And then especially at the very end where she suffers what feels like the worst possible outcome for her choices. But I think that makes her more interesting! 
> 
> It's supposed to be vague who says which "I love you" at the end. In the end it doesn't matter who says it first. It just matters that they love each other.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	14. Part 3.4: The Song of the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katharine starts to fix the mistakes she made, the source of the music is discovered.

The second they reached The Empress Katharine felt as if her head was clear. She should have spiraled into depression, she should have been crying on Elizabeth’s shoulder but all she could remember was the sound of the music and what she had read about the flute. The boon that was promised. How the sea could return people. Everything that she had learned over the past few years. There was magic in this world. And it was hers for the taking.

Katharine also knew that she could refrain from it no longer. The truth that she had worked so hard to avoid. That she had tried to tell Elizabeth, and that she had been interrupted in the telling. So as soon as they had set sail toward Shipwreck Cove, Katharine found Elizabeth in her Captain's Cabin looking over chats trying to plot the best and fastest course to The Brethren Court. She turned when Katharine came in - her face open - ruined by what they had both seen, what James had done for them. For Katharine, “If you need anything -”

Instead of sugar coating it, instead of saying anything else, Katharine said, “It was me, Elizabeth.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth smiled, “We made it out alive because of you.”

Katharine shook her head - denial gone, “No,” she stared at Elizabeth, “I told James where the heart was. I told him to take it. It was me. I thought -” she didn’t know what she had been thinking at the time, “I thought it would make him happy. But I suppose that doesn’t matter because he’s gone now, isn’t he?”

Katharine was not going to cry. She wasn’t. Because she knew how she would see James again, she did. But telling herself this didn’t make what she had just been through, any easier. And she didn’t want Elizabeth’s pity either, because the second she had it, it made her betrayal less real. She deserved the same anger Elizabeth had bestowed upon James on the ship, “I know,” and that made Katharine stare, “Well, I didn’t know. But when I saw the way the two of you interacted on the ship, the way you just leapt right into his arms like some fair maiden, something about it, it felt terribly wrong. You were so excited about the whole thing and I thought, how could she? How could she, when she knew what The English and The Crown had done to my father.”

“I won’t apologize,” Katharine admitted.

“No I suppose you won’t,” Elizabeth said, “You’ve never said sorry for much, and when you said it back at my father’s home when you worked for us, you never really meant it.”

“I spent my whole life on the sea,” Katharine told her, “I think I absorbed the worst bits of it. I like to think that I didn’t, but I know that I did. How could I so easily forgive Barbossa? How could I make the terrible choice I did? There are shadows to be found on the ocean, but I have to believe there is love and freedom too. It’s no wonder I became a pirate, really.”

Elizabeth sat against the desk that had all her maps, and placed her palms on the flat of it. Fingers curled around the edge, “What are you trying to say?”

“You’re my best friend Elizabeth,” Katharine said honestly, but something about the word friend rang hollow, Elizabeth was more than that to her, but Katharine didn’t know how to quantify it, “I’ve never had one. Not since I was a child and my father whisked me away to sea. I had men aboard his ship who loved me because I was my father’s daughter and thought me their Captain’s princess, but that’s not the same as what I feel for you. I gave up the sea for James, but I returned to it for you.”

“And that’s supposed to make things between us any better?”

Katharine rolled back on the balls of her feet, “I don’t know what that’s supposed to make it,” she answered, “But I do know that you're so dearly important to me. And if this is where it ends between us, our relationship, here in this room, I will be okay with that.”

“Would you really be okay with that?”

“If you were,” Katharine shrugged.

All of a sudden Elizabeth surged forward, only to stop just a little away from Katharine’s face. Then she turned abruptly and walked back to the desk so she could face Katharine again. A moment later she did the whole thing again, clearly thinking, her body working her through the paces while Katharine watched. At long last she came to a stop halfway between the desk and Katharine and said, “How could I ever be okay with that? You didn’t kill my father, as much as it pains me to admit. And when you did what you did for James it had nothing to do with England and everything to do with love. You made your bed, but not for you,” she laughed then suddenly and abruptly, “What a pair we are, Jack’s two murders feeling bad for a man who has caused us an awful lot of strife.”

“He’s also saved us quite a few times,” Katharine pointed out and then said, “Did Will really think you loved him?”

“I may have kissed Jack. I didn’t mean it, but the deed is truly done.”

The two of them started to laugh earnestly at that and by the end they were in tears, smiling, Somehow, this relationship of theirs would endure.

\---

Shipwreck Cove was a small thing, an inlet tucked just inside Shipwreck Island. But what lay within its teeth had Katharine staring in awe. The fortress was a massive thing made of wood and broken ship parts, criss-crossing over each other until it appeared two massive towers that peaked at the top. Like mountains. The buildings were awash with light, in such a way that in the dark of the night the fortress looked touched by stars and starlight. The Empress docked at one of the nearest ports and Katharine could see that The Black Pearl was already here, along with many other ships.

They were very late. The crew scrambled to get the boarding dock out and Katharine watched them with a smile on her face. It wasn’t an act, but as she absorbed everything around her, she remembered that as the island had grown ever closer the music had only strengthened. Now standing here in Shipwreck Cove, it had reached a fever pitch. The song that had long haunted her, she would find its player here. Elizabeth came to where she leaned on the rail and looked out to the pirates that moved to get them ready for departure, “I have something that I have to collect while I’m here,” Katharine told her.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow, “But you’ve never been here.”

“I’ve been hearing music,” Katharine admitted, “I know saying that makes it sound as if I’ve gone partially insane, but the song has brought me here. Whatever it is that I need, I think I will find it in these halls.”

Below one of the crew members yelled up to them, “Ready to embark!”

“Find it,” Elizabeth told her, “And then come back,” Katharine could hear the ‘to me’, that was implied, “I would hate to go into this fight without you.”

“I would hate to have made you.”

Both women went their separate ways once they were on the docks. Elizabeth followed the crew member of her ship who seemed to know where he was going and Katharine turned toward the sound. She followed it, over walkways and through narrow passageways, until she found herself in front of a small wooden home that looked like it had been wedged into the tower at a slightly odd angle. It had a flap for a door and the windows were all askew.

Katharine pushed the flap back and entered a room that despite the look of the house, was set up in a very straight sort of way. It was also terribly plain. There was an ornate circle rug in the center, and candles sat on shelves and nooks, but not much else. A fireplace with an open fire. Another door in the back, led to what Katharine assumed must be a back room. This was the door that opened when she came in.

From it stepped the tallest woman Kathryn had ever seen. Amazonian in stature. She towered over Katharine and her body was all muscle. She, unlike most of the pirates Katharine had seen as she had arrived here, was wearing a red embroidered gown. The dress looked as if it had been stolen from a merchant vessel on its way to France. Extravagant and bold. The woman was magnificent. Elegant power, Athena is a red dress, “What brings you here?” She asked.

“I keep on hearing music,” Katharine told her, “I think the reason might be here.”

“I had a feeling you would come,” she walked over to a set of drawers and from the folds of her dress appeared a set of keys that she used to unlock one of them, “The readings don’t often lie.”

From the drawers she pulled a thin long box, and the second Katharine’s eyes a lit on it the music all but stopped. The first time in a very long time. The woman sat down in the middle of the rug, bringing the box with her and Katharine sat down to join her. The box had a number of buttons on it and these the woman pressed in a pattern until the box clicked. She opened the box slowly and there, nestled in fabric was a simple long wooden flute. When the woman took it out Katharine could see ornate carvings of waves, pressed into it’s curves, “I think that’s what I’ve been hearing.”

The woman smiled, “I dare say it is,” she put it back into the box, “But I won’t be giving it to you just for free.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“It is old,” the woman said, “And old magic sometimes demands a trade. A song for a song,” she paused, “Or a gun.”

Katharine’s hand went down to her gun as if the woman had reached out to take it. Her father’s gun. The last she had of him. Could she - was this flute so important to her? But she remembered what Tia Dalma had said, about wishes and The English Rose, and with shaking hands Katharine removed the gun from her belt and handed it over to the woman, “Take it, I have no more need for it.”

The woman wrapped her hand around the gun and then with nary a glance at it, threw it into the fire across from them. The fire let out a piercing whistle as her father’s gun began to burn, the heat of the flame eroding the handle and turning the metal red. Katharine’s heart clenched. But she could not look back now. The woman passed the flute to Katharine, “A gun, for a flute.”

Katharine tucked the flute into her belt and said some semblance of wish to a god she did not know - that the flute did what she hoped it did, “A gun for a flute,” she sealed the bargain.

\---

Walking down the beach, next to Jack, Elizabeth, and Barbossa without her gun, felt empty. Elizabeth had commented on it’s lack when they had been reunited at the ship but Katharine did not want to talk about it. Not yet. Maybe when it hurt less to think about it gone. However Katharine dared the thought that when she had gotten over the pain of losing the gun, it wouldn’t much matter to talk about it anyway. No, the gun was gone, and battle lines had been drawn in the sand. The English had followed them here.

Correction - Jack had led the English here. To save his own skin, Katharine wasn’t sure. But as they stood there attempting to behave like decent people who were not about to battle, exchanges were made - Will for Jack - and sides were chosen. Lines drawn in the not so metaphorical sand. Davy Jones whispered in Jack’s ear, “Do you fear death?” and even if the question was not directed at her - Katharine’s soul whispered back - no.

But she did fear that she would not see James again, and Katharine thought that the two might be the same.

\---

Tia Dalma was Calypso. The truth of her visage rang clear to Katharine. They would release her, and the chaos of her will would guide them to victory. Pirates always did well in chaos. The words were spoken, like a kiss, like a promise, like a lover, “Calypso, I release you from your human bonds.”

A gust of air carried over the flute that was tucked in Katharine’s belt and she heard the note clear as day, clear as the sea that lured a ship into the doldrums. Her father’s gun had not needed attunement but this note wormed its way into her heart and squeezed. As Tia Dalma roared her return to the sea Katharine found herself standing in the middle of an ocean alone, the words of everyone else around her lost to the winds. Calypso was there with her. The two women stood in front of each other and Calypso walked across the water to greet her, “You found it,” she touched the flute on Katharine’s hip and Katharine did not flinch away.

“I found what you asked me to seek.”

Calypso laughed, for it was Calypso now, “I did not ask you to seek it, it was destiny.”

“Are you and destiny not the same?” They had started to meld together in Katharine’s head, “Was the sea not my destiny?”

Calypso continued to smile at her, and who was this woman? Who was this person compared to Tia Dalma? She was reborn, and the most beautiful woman that Katharine had ever laid eyes on. Dirt gone from her face, her burgundy colored dress made whole again. Dreadlocks that had been matted - now rewound and free. A crown of shells sat on her head. This was the goddess of the sea, unbroken and unbound. A Queen in her own right, “We still have much more to do you and I,” Calypso told her, “I cannot always see into the future so I do not know where or how or when, but destiny is a continuous thing. It rises and falls with the tide.”

Mist began to gather around them, and it caressed Katharine’s cheek, the real world collapsing into theirs, “Was what you said about The English Rose true? About the boon?”

She had to know, she had to know before time ran out and she and Calypso were separated, “Aye,” Calypso answered, “But you know the price.”

“I am not afraid to pay it,” Katharine told her.

“No,” Calypso smiled, “I did not think you were.”

A crack of thunder, and then a jolt of lightning exploded from the sky separating the two of them. Katharine felt the start of rain on her skin and the wind on her face. Everything felt different inside her and yet nothing felt different at all. But she knew the instrument at her waist now, could feel it humming inside of her. Not loud, not soft. Just a pleasant feeling that sat inside of her - weaved throughout her whole body - her whole being. A crab scuttled up her and into her hand where it blinked up at her before escaping into the ocean. Elizabeth looked at her, “Where did you go?”

Instead Katharine said, “We’re going to win.”

A determined look crossed over Elizabeth’s features and she started to walk amongst the crew, “It’s not over.”

Katharine grinned and she could see from the way that Will looked at Elizabeth he agreed, “There’s still a fight to be had,” he said.

“We’ve an armada against us, and with the Dutchman, there’s no chance,” Gibbs tried to argue.

But it was too late, Katharine knew. She had seen the space where the song had been laid inside of her, and whether it be her design or not there were still people who would see this thing through till the end. And Katharine was foolish enough to follow them, “Only a fool’s chance.” Elizabeth replied.

To see to the ends the bonds that Katharine had forged in friendship, in love, and in shattered choices made in the dark underbellies of ships, “Revenge won’t bring your father back, Miss Swann,” Barbossa told her.

Katharine turned to stare at him, “That hardly matters now.”

“Well, Miss Norrington, it’s not something I’m intending to die for.”

His words didn’t have the effect he was searching for. Instead Elizabeth climbed on the rail, Barbossa’s words spurring her into further action, “You’re right. Then what shall we die for?” As Elizabeth spoke Katharine could see the men of the crew slowly come to sway under her words. Under Elizabeth’s own spoken song. They would die for freedom. For the chance to once again be called pirate and the ability to do as they pleased. England and The Crown could not control them hence, “Hoist the colors!” Elizabeth cried.

“Hoist the colors,” Will answered.

“Hoist the colors!” Katharine said with a grin on her face.

The cheer went out from among the men, the cry traveling down the ship and leaping from ship to ship as the flags were raised. The first true drop of rain hit against Katharine’s skin and then another, and another, as the sea broke in front of them and the cries and the screams and the yells converged into a swirling mass. A maelstrom that hearkened back to the one named Charybdis. Their ship began sailing towards it, and towards destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Katharine whenever she sees a woman that's pretty: wow, beautiful, the most amazing I've ever seen. And I respect that. 
> 
> Also it's so important to me that Calypso and Katharine are both women of color and more importantly BiPoC. I don't think the people who wrote Pirates of the Caribbean knew exactly what they were saying when they implied that the sea was a woman of color who had been wronged - specifically a black woman of color (or maybe they did?) - but they stumbled into it anyway. Especially when it comes to the history of black diaspora through The Caribbean, and how terrible a lot of it was, since so much of it was born of slavery. So a black woman, choosing another black woman to hold The Flute of the Seas is just... love that. 
> 
> Anyway, next chapter is the last chapter of this story ): and then it's on to the sequel!


	15. Part 3.5: The Damned and The Found (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is freedom and love to be found on the ocean, Katharine has discovered. Especially for those she loves.

The two ships danced around each other in the cycle of the maelstrom, the tension of battle so thick that Katharine’s heart strangled inside her chest. She had faith in their victory but the waiting, oh the waiting made her question it for a second. A beat. A moment suspended on time. Waiting for the command of the captain. She pulled the flute out of her belt and her fingers tightened around it, soon the ships would be close enough to exchange cannon fire. Soon they would be engaged in combat the likes of which Katharine had never experienced. This was much more than blood for blood revenge. Saving friends. Escaping danger. The fate of modern piracy rested on this battle. A future for people like her. For people like Elizabeth and Jack. For generations to come. In her hands the wood of the flute was stable and strong and her face had been moved to match it. Katharine trusted the winds of fate. Calypso’s smile.

There was a shout, a yell. The crack of Barbossa’s voice, and cannon fire blasted across the chasm of the whirlpool. Time stood still.

Katharine brought the flute to her lips. As the cannonballs glanced through the ship a number of them barrelled through the railings. As one came toward her Katharine played one note, a single solitary reed thin thing and the cannonball which had been aiming directly towards her stopped, as if it’s motion had been halted.

Katharine played a second note, a louder more honest sound and the cannonball reversed course where she sent it smashing against the broadside of The Flying Dutchman. Barbossa peered over the wheel at her, eyes wide as saucers, “Begging your pardon Miss Norrington but what on earth was that?”

“A gift,” she told him, “From The English Rose.”

His eyes turned to slits, “Are ye’ telling me, that the watcher of The Flute of the Seas just handed her over to you no questions be asked?”

“There was a bit of an exchange,” Katharine told him, “And I think The Goddess Calypso herself blessed it.”

She could see that he wanted to say more but another cannon aimed directly at the quarterdeck came hurling towards them, and Katharine played two more notes, directing it away from the protective rail and into the sea where it dropped like a stone, “Well,” Barbossa told her, whatever criticism he had swallowed by how Katharine had just saved his life, “If you had been honest with me from the start I dare say I would have gone into this battle with higher spirits.”

“May your spirits be high for the rest of the fight then,” Katharine told him.

He laughed and then yelled out to the rest of the crew, “It be too late to alter course now, mateys!” He grinned and then looked back at Katharine, “Now hold my ship together while I get us ready to board.”

She nodded at him and then walked down the steps to the main deck. She dodged a few cannonballs and found a quiet place in the middle of the ship where she began to play. Around her she felt the boat shiver as it was torn asunder, but each time a hole was blown into the ship she played a simple tune, and the wood would re-work itself into a safe barrier. Across the deck she caught Elizabeth as she stopped to stare for just a second and redirected the cannon fire that splintered her way. Where there was chaos, Katharine redirected it safely away from those she cherished most. This was the power that the captain of The English Rose had left buried deep in his most cherished instrument, and now Katharine would use it to bring them victory.

Will stopped in front of her, “I don’t know where you got that but it seems rather handy in a fight.”

“It was a present,” Katharine told him before yanking him to the ground as a shot fired over their heads and back into the sea, “That was far too close.”

“I should let you get back two it then,” he said, voice a bit higher pitched than normal on account of the fact that they had almost lost their heads.

“I do think that would be wise.”

They stood up and another volley had Katharine weaving between the fire until she could find another safe space to begin playing once more. With each note and each turn of her tune, the ships got closer and closer together and then they were being boarded. Katharine dropped her flute as one of Davy Jones’ pirates approached her and she blocked his sword stroke with the head of her flute, and then punched him in the face, knocking him backwards. He glowered at her and now with the distance between them Katharine was able to play a small tune of three notes which redirected the bullet fire of three guns, shooting him through his cheek, his chest, and the wrist of the hand that grabbed his sword. Which he dropped on the ground with a cry.

It wasn’t the same as her father’s gun, but it would have to do in a pinch. She hit him again with the flute, this time around the side of his head and he collapsed on the ship. Once again, her mind reminded her - knocked out - not dead. She stepped over his body and ran back up to the quarter deck in time to hear Elizabeth as she cried through the chaos, “Barbossa! Marry us!”

Well, this had been a long time coming. Better late than never, Katharine mused, “I’m a little busy at the moment!” Barbossa called back to her, glancing Katharine’s way.

His stare told her pretty clearly what he wanted and she placed the flute to her lips. Will yelled up to him, “Barbossa! Now!”

Katharine did her best to keep sword and fire away from Barbossa as she played a song that was both somehow a wedding song and a sea shanty. And in her song, as the battle raged around them and her beloved Elizabeth, finally, finally kissed and married to the sound of screams and swords, was when Katharine felt it. Just a little tug - but it was there in her bosom - and she followed the notes of the song she was playing until she could see it in her mind's eye.

A ship, proud and covered in mist. A ghost ship, with a dead crew, and a captain who had cursed them. She kept playing, calling out to that ship and she heard it answer her call. Heard it bow to her tune and ask, ‘What is your greatest desire? What is your truest boon?’

And Katharine answered, ‘Bring him back to me. Bring him back and know him as your new captain. Return my James Norrington to me, and I will gladly suffer your curse.’

She came out of herself to watch as Will and Elizabeth separated, and felt her heart swell with adoration and elation for what she had seen. For what she had been allowed to bear witness to. Her happiness however was short lived as The Black Pearl tipped too far inward and crashed against The Flying Dutchman. She stumbled, and nearly was beheaded by a sword stroke. With a jab she brought her flute into the throat of the man who had attempted to slash her and then stabbed again at the same place, breaking his windpipe. It was good that some of these men at least, were men.

Her eyes scanned the ship through the chaos, and she watched as both Will and Elizabeth, one rather soon after the other went over onto The Flying Dutchman. With the play of a number of notes that felt far too complex for such a simple instrument, Katharine caused a number of cannons to halt in midair between the ships. With a prayer she tucked her flute into her belt for safe keeping, hoisted herself over the railing of the quarter deck and ran along the path she had made, onto The Flying Dutchman. The second she landed the cannons fell into the sea like birds falling from the sky and Katharine let out the breath she had been holding.

Now on the quarterdeck of The Flying Dutchman she blocked the sword that aimed at her midsection and began to parry with her flute. She forced the man down the stairs and onto the main deck. With a great hit against his side she was able to send him to his knees and she once again brought the flute up to her mouth to play. But no sound came out. Instead a stray bullet from a pistol caught her across the shoulder. It was time then.

Instead, Katharine cracked the flute against the man’s neck and sent him to the wood never to get up. A second man came at her and she did her best to keep him at bay but she could feel her shoulder growing weaker.

A second crack of gun fire and something hot blossomed across her stomach. Something vital had punctured deep inside her. Katharine stumbled but she had not yet given up. With a desperate flourish of her flute she drew the man she was fighting closer in, grabbed him by the collar and threw him over the railing of the ship with what little strength she still had left in her.

Clutching the flute she collapsed onto the rail and looked across the way to watch as Davy Jones stabbed Will through the chest. She and Will locked eyes briefly, and then Elizabeth was with him obstructing her view. She could not hear what they were saying, but Katharine could feel her heart start to slow. Could feel it pounding away inside of her uselessly, as the blood left her.

She wondered if Elizabeth even knew she was onboard. By the way Jack pulled her away from Will after the two of them had helped him stab Davy Jones’ heart she doubted it. By the way she cried his name, and only his, Katharine knew it to be true. Good, she thought, as her heart continued to slow. Good.

It was better this way.

\---

Katharine came to standing on a beach made up of black sand. A boat with a lantern was in front of her and a hooded figure beckoned her forward. She recognized this place, this Sea of the Dead. It was where Elizabeth had discovered that her father had passed beyond the veil. It was where Katharine had failed to comfort her. She stepped forward one step and then stopped. Watched as the hooded figure continued to beckon and found she could go no further. Torn on the shore of her own death, Katharine turned and came up against a body. Backing up she looked up into the clear eyes of Will. The two of them stared at each other and then he said, “I felt you go down with the ship.”

“I died,” Katharine did not feel the need to pretend, “Are you him now?”

“I dare say I may be yes.”

“Come to see me off?”

“Ah,” he looked at the hooded figure, “I came to ask you a question actually,” he smiled, “Do you fear death?”

He was so kind when he asked. Nothing like the harsh spittle of how Davy Jones had spoken the words to Jack what felt like such a long time ago. Katharine shook her head, “No,” and looked back at the boat only to find that Will had reached out to softly brush against her wrist. She turned back to him and said what she had thought on that same beach before this all began. With one amendment, that she knew Will would understand, “But I do fear not seeing them again, and isn’t that the same thing anyway?”

\---

Water parted around her and The Dutchman as they surfaced together. Where her heart used to be Katharine felt nothing, heard nothing but the sound of the ocean. But in her hand, where it had been when she died The Flute of the Sea still lay. She twirled it between her fingers, and then glanced up at her new captain, at the man she had sworn the rest of her days to. Will looked down at her and the rest of the crew before he said, “Ready on the guns!”

Katharine turned to the crew and re-relayed his message, “You hear him, ready on the guns!”

As their ship turned to join The Black Pearl, Katharine moved to the front of the forecastle and began to play. Music filled the seas as The Flying Dutchman and The Black Pearl fired into the English ship and for each cannon, each loud pounding noise Katharine directed their course to where they would do the most harm. The most impact. Where they would tear the English ship from sunder to sunder. Katharine, along with the ships and their captain’s, gave no quarter.

The sea had spoken.

Lowering her flute Katharine looked out over the bow and watched as the mist cleared. Among the mist and the quickly fleeing English vessels - she saw it - rocking in the water as if an illusion made real. An older ship with the words The English Rose painted on its side in gold. And standing on its decks, staring right at her, as if he was astonished to see her, was her James Norrington.

\---

Katharine walked from the sea like a nymph. It had felt strange to walk on the bottom of the ocean as if her feet were iron and the ocean breathable. Part and parcel with being undead now she thought. As she stepped onto land she found that something about how the dry sand felt under her feet was just a little off. Like she didn’t quite belong to the land anymore. This feeling would eventually pass, she knew, and she buried it away when she saw James. When his eyes landed on her face and made everything just a little brighter. He was standing next to Elizabeth who seemed to almost not believe it with the way they had been chatting among each other before she had breached the ocean in front of them, “Katharine,” James said, his voice like a prayer.

“I wasn’t sure it would work,” she told him as they met across from each other.

He took her hand in his and kissed the back of it feather soft, “It doesn’t matter. You’re alive and you saved me.”

Katharine couldn’t stop her eyes from growing sad when he said that and she took the hand that was in hers, and trailed it down her chest so it rested just where her heart had been, “In a way I am alive, but in many ways I am not. My life is tied to that of my captain.”

“Your captain?”

With a turn of her head Katharine glanced behind her as Will walked from the sea, as she had, water dripping off his body as he emerged, “Will!” Elizabeth cried running forward and tumbling into his arms as he caught her about the waist.

Glancing back at James, Katharine smiled a sad smile, “My captain,” then she too kissed the back of James’s hand, “Remind me why I love you, before we are parted once more.”

With a look back at Elizabeth, and the confirmation that she and Will seemed to be growing ever cozier, James started leading her up the hill when Katharine heard Elizabeth call out to her, “Wait!”

She stopped and turned back towards her, “Elizabeth.”

“Why does this end with me losing you? Why did you get to make that decision?”

Elizabeth’s arms were tense, hands curled into fists, “It’s not goodbye,” Katharine told her, “It’s I’ll see you again,” she touched Elizabeth’s arm softly, “And I’d do it again, and over and over,” she nodded at Will, “Now go be with your husband.”

Maybe it was the way Katharine said it ‘go be with your husband’ but there was hardly a second between the words she had said, and the moment Elizabeth was kissing her. It felt strange at first. A sensation of, we shouldn’t be doing this. But somewhere in the background that melted away. Elizabeth was her friend true, but she had for so long, been so much more than that to Katharine too. A knot to which she measured so much in her life. Elizabeth kissed so much differently than James, it was sweet in a way, but it tasted like the ocean. It tasted like freedom. Elizabeth let go of her face, and their chests heaved between them, “Oh,” Katharine breathed.

“I didn’t mean to do that,” Elizabeth told her, “Not in front of an audience and certainly not in front of our husbands.”

“I -”

Elizabeth had made Katharine speechless. Which was a rare sigh indeed. Behind her James snorted, “I did wonder when the two of you might figure it out.”

“It was getting very tedious watching them dance around each other I admit,” Will laughed.

Katharine glared at the both of them, “Shut up. Either of you.”

“When next I see you then,” Elizabeth spoke.

“When your call overpowers that of the sea, and implores Will and I home,” Katharine pressed a kiss to Elizabeth’s forehead.

Now, truly ready to go, she took James’ outstretched hand and followed him down the beach.

There he pressed kisses into her stomach and found his home settled between her thighs. And that was where the two of them stayed, until the call of the sea came to take Katharine away.

**END STORY ONE**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't set out to also write this story with an OC/Elizabeth ending, but in the last few chapters there were far too many places where I wrote dialogue for them or a moment for them and my brain screamed "why are they not kissing after this?" and I think when something like that happens more than once, you have to follow where the characters want to lead. So this story turned into a very unexpected slow burn love story as well. I didn't tag it because I feared that people might think that it meant that Will/Elizabeth ended somewhere along the way, which as you can see, is very much not the case.
> 
> Also - this ending is a fair bit bittersweet. James is alive again, but Katharine is tied to The Dutchman. Thus the "Sort of a Fix-It" tag. If you want to see how that all gets solved - you'll be able to read that in story two. Which, as a sneak peak, I shall tell you is titled "The Girl and The Goddess". Unlike this story, "The Girl and The Goddess" is wholly original and follows no canon.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
